I have other goals as well. I want to enjoy the moment and all of my surroundings here. I want to spend some quality time with my son and his fiance who live here. And I want to see how I do in a different culture--one without the comforts I have grown used to.
Before I left, I got this card from my friend that said: "And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin.
It's terrifying to try new things, isn't it? Things we aren't sure we'll be good at? Things that test us in new ways. Things whose outcome we don't know. But the truth is, we don't know anything. We only think we do.
Don't you find that sometimes in the middle of your life, where you feel as if you could predict exactly how that day and that week and the next will go, something unexpected or shocking happens--it doesn't have to be a bad thing. It might be that you are going through your day-to-day life and suddenly you decide to quit your job or decide you absolutely must go somewhere you don't ordinarily go---and because of this seemingly sudden decision, you meet someone who is now your best friend or partner or someone who gives you just the tip you need to take the next step in your life.
You take a class, hoping to learn something that will advance you in your career. Instead you meet your
best friend there. You stop for a bagel--and you don't even know why--and you meet someone who will become a part of your life, even change your destiny, altogether.
I believe that like the Marsha Linehan "Behavior Chain Analysis," tool of her Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Often known as DBT), one seemingly unrelated thing may oddly lead to something important that happens to us down the road.
An example of this, for me, was that because I was a stay-at-home mom for a bit, I was reading a lot of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Laureate for Literature in that year. On an impulse, I took out my little Sears Manual typewriter and typed him a letter. On another impulse, I scribbled my phone number at the end. At the time, I lived in the suburbs of New York. But, I didn't know where to send my letter, so I sent it to his publisher.
And because I was filled with creative ennui and doing a lot of reading when my children were small, I wrote the letter. And because I wrote the letter, Mr. Singer called me and invited me over. And because I went to meet him, I was invited to a Chanukah party at his home. And because I went to the party and wrote down some notes about what had happened there, I wrote about my meeting, seven years after it had happened. And because I sent it to The New York Times' "Speaking Personally" Section, it got published there. And because it got published in the New York Times, I thought of myself, more officially, as a writer.
So you see what I mean? It's the Butterfly Effect or The Chaos Theory, that one tiny shift in the world, causes something else to shift ever so slightly, so that over time, big changes can happen.
That's why we have to stretch and grow and try new things, even if we don't (and we never really do) know the outcome. And we certainly can't know the ramifications of some small thing we do over time.
But, there is a kind of domino effect. We topple over one domino--and the whole domino world reconfigures.
I have to keep telling myself: It doesn't matter how old I am or what has happened before. I am--we all are recreating ourselves every moment throughout our lives, a teeny-tiny bit at a time. So, that is why we must, we absolutely must, follow our instincts and try something new. It's especially important to us Sixties kids. We need to keep the aliveness in our lives. And nobody else can do it for us!
No comments:
Post a Comment