Leaving Business, Returning to Self

(This is the first in the “Existential Attic” series. It is from P., who is a visual artist.) 


P. - "After the Storm"

I always believed that we are each born in a random place, and have little say over the course of our lives. It's not for life to bend to our will, I thought, but that all people have to learn how to fit into the life they have. I spent decades trying to fit into my life. I was to have a corporate job, and be very happy. Everyone I know is content going to work each day and dwelling in the place given to them. They forget about homeless children and war, and they ignore all the wonderful things in this world they will never see. They don't seem to notice the human condition, which I'm swimming in. Why can't I accept and be content?

P. - "2158"

Accepting my place and making the best of it, never worked for me. A round peg in a square hole. Although I have often been surrounded by one wonderful circle of people after another, and although I’ve worked with many good people, I have been a malcontent. Until I began to spend time painting, I found comfort and stress relief in few places. Anti-depressants sometimes helped, as did anxiety reducers. I conformed to the rules of my jobs, and was always proud of my accomplishments, but the repetition and inability to really speak about 99% of the things I was thinking, would overwhelm me. I've walked away from middle management jobs because I was bored and unable to contain myself any longer. It got so bad at my most recent job that I would pray my plane would crash so I would not have to go to one more meeting. Numerous times, I wished it could all be over quickly, because going to another meeting, babbling in earnest about nothing, was so unbearable to me. When I could not find a way to push myself through one more day of it, I shocked another group of people, by turning in my resignation. This time I knew that another one of these jobs - more of this, less of that- wouldn't help. I don't have the stomach for it. I could either die or be myself.

P. - "Cityscape"

Being creative is the only relief I have from a world in which other people reside. There is more truth in one of Dali’s clocks, than there is in the 9-5; there is more truth in Picasso's women than at the Oscars. I don't know if any of my creative endeavors will touch the truth, but I've begun to learn a craft that will at least give me a chance of doing that. What a relief.

As I said, I always thought the onus was on me to bend to the life and time I live in, and I tried. At mid-life, I realize that I cannot change, and there aren't enough pills or cocktail parties to dull my disappointment in all the things I once thought looked so shiny. So at mid-life I find myself thinking things that previously made me cringe. Things like “my journey”. I begin the next part of my life, on a bumpy journey, for sure, but this time I pray all the planes stay in the air so I have enough time. There is so much I want to learn, so much I would like to get off my chest.

(P. is writing anonymously. If you want to contact P., e-mail me at coach@potential4life.com. Include the subject of your inquiry. I will pass your message to P. who will decide whether or not to respond.)



Ordering Trees

Leone and I just got done placing an order with the state DNR for tree seedlings that we'll plant up at the farm as soon as we can get a shovel into the ground. Poplars, highbush cranberry, Norway and white pine, pincherry, yellow birch, etc. etc.

We've been putting it off for a while and I've been worrying that the trees would be sold out again, meaning still yet another year's delay in reforesting the land. Money we don't have, work to plant them, the deer will browse them all off, the spring will be too dry and they'll all die.

Up against that is imagining how it will be to walk the land years from now and see the results. Or enjoy the exquisite astringent sweetness of the highbush cranberry sauce. Or warm ourselves by a fire from wood we planted.

Leone's dad must have had much the same conflict half a century ago when he planted the Norways that are now ready for harvest, and will probably be used for a home for us some day. He didn't live to see that with his natural eye but I know for sure he could see it with his spiritual vision.

What it comes down to is you get to pick the vision you want to have. In so doing, you pick the results you'll get and the future you'll experience.

Copyright 2012 Leonard Snyder

Make a Difference

If a human being takes an action, the soul takes an action… the soul … does nothing if you do nothing; but if you light a fire, it chops wood; if you make a boat, it becomes the ocean. (Robert Bly, Iron John)

Robert Bly’s words, as so often happens, came to me at exactly the right time. I first read them several years ago and I’ve been studying them ever since. If it sounds odd to be so taken with a few sentences, go back and read the quote again. Do you see more the second time through?

Believing that change can happen is necessary but not enough. If you want to see change, act. Your action is the proof of your belief.

The size of your action does not matter. Whether you give someone a mansion or some mittens, it’s all the same. A circle has no beginning or end.

Involve someone else in your action. Act for someone, not against something.

Act as close to the individual as you can. If you want people to be fed, give someone a sandwich. If that isn’t practical for you, find the people who are doing the work, and support them. But don’t confuse organization with results. An individual raindrop probably doesn’t worry about “the big picture” and yet somehow oceans form; the contour of the land takes care of that. Give your neighbor, or a stranger, ten dollars; if she isn’t behind on the mortgage, she knows someone who is.

Copyright 2012, Leonard Snyder