I got to thinking earlier this evening about an old friend of mine. We met at work and were fast admirers of each other. We talked often and occasionally got together with friends outside of work. My friend came from money. To top it off, he had a brilliant mind which had once been put to use by oil companies looking for new places to drill. Still, somehow, my geophysicist friend ended up working in a tiny audio rental company and mixing music on the side. His attention to music wasn’t just a passing whim either. He pursued it for as long as I knew him and kept track of his career. What can explain the new course?
I believe that our life circumstances build us up around a certain model, an expectation. Our families, friends, our choices and their consequences mold us and bend us and teach us how and who to be. And yet, there can come a time when we find within ourselves this empty spot that cries out to be explored. A negative space wholly unexpected and charged. It wells up in the form of desire and longing, expands us with the heat of life and age, and we begin to know something about ourselves that wasn’t real until we noticed that all the while we were wrapped around it.
Looking back now that I am just a little older than he was then, I realize the massive change that has taken place in the trajectory of my life since my early twenties. I have felt at times like a clay jar that has been shattered. I can feel the places where my walls once stood, but I can also feel the edges where those walls touched nothingness. I feel the shape of that nothingness that longs to be acknowledged and fully known.
I smile at the thought of all of this and at how taking chances on the unknown voice inside me brought me the best friend I’ve ever had and the two greatest joys of creation that I could never have imagined. I sink into contentment, for just an instant.
2 comments:
"Find the work your hands love to do" says the end of Ecclesiastes - I'm sure you know the reference. Your musings reminded me of the musings of a jaded king - who then added, of course, my favorite admonition - "enjoy the wife of your youth" (and of course) "love your God." It is simple, really, like you say, we can make it so complicated. Money always makes it complicated. Yet, so does the lack of money. Back then, to your favorite (ha ha) writer, Paul, who says he has learned to be truly content with little or much. Here's hoping I can say that someday . . . it's hard with Target so close by - seriously though, after having been sick 3 times for 4 months straight while carrying babies - I still wake up and thank God that I am able to go about my life's daily work - however mundane. I thank Him that I'm able to do the laundry, make dinner AND clean it up without feeling like I'm going to throw up. It is in the middle of the mundane that we often find the mystical, don't you think?
Love you! Write on! (I just read your gluten explantation. I stand corrected. It was still nice, though, to know Craig was on my side.)
Kudos to your friend for doing what he loves. Most of us find some mix of good and bad in our jobs, and it is important to balance that out with what we do in life outside of work.
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