I have been reading this book called Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer for a class I'm taking. It's all about finding your calling, your vocation in life. It's also about losing your fear and trusting yourself and the people around you. Not so much what you want to do for work -but what you could be doing if you were following your soul.
It transcends more than work though. A full and complete life, in my head at any rate, should be balanced in a lot of areas. "Who am I?" "Whose am I?" Do I want to be loved? Am I loveable? Am I a good person?
So how does one find that balance? My family for instance is more important to me than work. In fact I would say that they are more important to me than anything, really. I've worked awful jobs to support them. I've pawned things to buy them food and birthday or Christmas presents. I've gone without so that they wouldn't have to. I've done all of that and felt good doing it. Unconditional love, baby.
We've been broke, homeless, threatened, divided. Pretty much anything bad that can happen; has. In times of crisis you really get to see exactly who people are as their true selves. I'm pretty good in crisis. So is Mary. It just is. We've also had a lot of crisis in our life -so maybe we just developed skills to deal with it. In the end our family always seems to prevail.
I've overcome the depression that used to come over me about Christmas. Chiefly because I love the family gathering we have for Christmas. Of course, when I say "overcome" it only means that the first Christmas we spent together; my wife Mary told me to ."knock it the hell off" when I started talking about how I hated the holidays. She's the only person in the world that could have made me hear that. But she said it when I needed to hear it and it stuck.
I suppose that's why I believe family is so vital. We give each other things on a daily basis. Important things. Beautiful things. Painful things. Family things. I was given three beautiful daughters and a fantastic son. I'm a lucky man. Luckier than most men I know anyway.
My youngest daughter, Lana, is just astounding. She sees the world in a unique way that really jibes with my own view. She told me yesterday that she thought people "just didn't want to be happy". And that they didn't like it when other people were happy. I thought that was very profound. Lana always says profound things to me and has since she was tiny.
Lana is always looking at the angles. She was taking about math word problems. How long does it takes to get a certain distance if one house is at X and the other is Y. Her response was -"it depends on how you get there". Are you driving, walking, riding a bike? I thought that was a good question. But apparently they just wanted to know based on the distance. Stupid math.
I think that "how you get there" is important though. It does change the learning outcome. I'm always trying to figure out new ways to "get there" myself. I've spent the last year and especially the last three months or so trying to figure out how to "get there". It hasn't done me any good because I didn't end up getting what I wanted. To paraphrase Mr. Jagger, I may have gotten what I needed though.
So the problem becomes more about how do I get to me? What is it I want? The answer is; I don't know. I really don't. People have been telling me this for years. You have to know what you want, Shawn. You have to think about yourself. I thought I did. But I don't. Not a clue.
I want my family to be happy. I want another happy Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. I want to see my children become successful and bloom. I want to try and achieve something that has become impossible in other aspects of my life.
As a parent you have to go through all of these phases. Our children are 22, 20, 13, and 12. Since we are on the last cycle of parenting we've been though all these phases. I'm not sure what it will be like to watch the older two become adults but I'm certainly looking forward to it. I'm feeling prepared. Yet, they always throw you curves. But I suppose the unpredictability is part of the fun. They are individuals after all. Not cookie cutter clones of Mary and I.
In Palmer's book he talks about going on an Outward Bound expedition when he was 41. The instructor told him to repel down a cliff. He came to a big hole on the side of the cliff and didn't know what to do. He couldn't go straight down any longer. The instructor said she was going to teach him the Outward Bound motto -"If you can't get out of it, get into it". I presume sometimes that's all there is to do. Get into it. Deal with it. Do the work.
Posted by shawn at October 11, 2006 11:51 AM