Starting Life Anew
All of us, if we are old enough (and sometimes even if we are not), have experienced major life changes. Changes that are so dramatic that they totally and utterly change the landscape of our life. What was before is no more. And we, generally standing stunned and dazed, have to pick up bits and pieces and remnants and mementos and items we think significant and start over, to build again. We are in unknown territory, often lost, confused, hurt, grieving. We get to chose to add to our existing life canvas or to start a new work, a new picture of our life.
How many times do we go through this in a lifetime? For most of us, several times, for some of us, more often than we would like. Whether it is the latest pandemic, the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, a natural disaster, a family tragedy, a mass tragedy... our lives, no matter how secure they feel at the time, appear to be ready at any moment to crumble like a house of cards. I suppose that it appeals to our need for security, consistency, predictability that we get used to the order of our lives long enough to be seriously impacted when our apple cart is toppled. Surely it would be better for us as a species to be more comfortable with change, to embrace the unexpected and to put less stock in all of our plans. I'm sure some smart person out there has calculated how much time we spend planning, setting goals, making new year resolutions and trying to control our lives (I couldn't find the statistics on a quick internet search). My own experience tells me that we spend a lot of time doing this. For most of us, we do our planning in neat, tidy forays during our waking hours. For many others, we do our planning while tossing and turning and trying to sleep at night. We are good planners and bad planners and laid-back types and worriers, yet we all plan. Then, kaboom! To varying degrees, we become upset or meltdown when things do not go according to our plan. And, life never really does go according to our plan. Right?
Given that this is the more common reality -- that life really never does go according to plan -- we are actually most likely much better at dealing with change and coping with the unexpected than we credit to ourselves. Yet still, we loathe it. A major change such as the type of apple cart toppling experience I am referring to here can leave us incapacitated for months, years even. At some point nearly all of us find a way to move on, to move forward, to start fresh, to build new. We have started our maiden voyage. We have a new plan, a new direction, a new life (or at least the idea of one). And we live this new life, grow used to its patterns and comfortable in its consistency until it all changes again.
It seems that we are either in transition or ensconced in our current life routine. As a culture, we generally value the period of sheltering in the life routine much more highly than the period of transition. So much so that we have an unwritten understanding of when someone has been in transition "long enough" and "needs to get on with their life". Most of us find a person in an extended period of transition irritating, or maybe in need of help or certainly in need of empathy. Yet, what if the transitioning -- the period of limbo and uncertainty and exploration -- is just as valuable a part of living as the eventual structure and shelter that we build? What if it is all about the voyage itself -- adjusting, adapting, learning, loving -- and not about the destinations that we seek or build? Would we be a happier collective of humans if our society valued being kind or caring over being "productive"? If we were all kind voyagers would we all have a better place to live than being productive citizen entrepreneurs?
I am not wise or knowledgeable enough to know the answer (is there only one answer?) to these questions and I can think of strong arguments supporting a number of positions. For me, for now, I am content enjoying the voyage.
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