Dare I say am enjoying life?
Despite being broke and effectively homeless, I feel good. Inshallah!!* I'm not sure I've ever been able to say that. Even when those around me are not, I see clearly and I am even, GULP, optimistic about the future. That's not like me.
For the last year or so, life has been chaotic, or at least that's what most would say from the outside looking in. When all of it started, I set out with a very specific plan to find the place where I belong. It has taken 9 months, my life savings, the disintegration of a relationship I'd built up in my head for years, and a trip almost half way around the world, but I am good...able to smile frequently, laugh easily, and believe there are possibilities....
No one has understood why. Certains** close to me have commented on what they consider my immaturity, my naivete, my lack of focus, and even my selfishness. I have found that when you cease to fit into the role you have traditionally played in the lives of others, it ususually doesn't sit well with them. You end up forcing change, a new way of being, on people who never intended it. Today, the cutest cab driver (Orange Cab in the house) asked me if I was a trouble maker. I told him it depends on who you ask. Ain't that the truth.
That's not my intention of course. I once came across a horoscope that something like:
"You live too aggressively and love too obssessively
and you always demand the impossible. That's the glory and
the terror of being you. Don't ever change, babe..."
This is true. Although I've tried in the past to suppress this particular way of being in the world, to no avail. It went on to say:
"...there may come a time when living too aggressively and loving too obssessively
will be just the right amount and demanding the impossible will make
perfect sense. On that strange and happy day you will achieve all that you thought
would secretly elude you forever, think you can handle that much success?"
I saved that one. (find more horoscopes like it here)
I am wondering if that time is coming now. I am beginning to see that while I haven't gotten what I wanted, I've gotten what I needed. That is really the trick, recognizing that at any given moment, you are where you're supposed to be, even if it seems wrong or painful or depressing. Everything happens for a reason and is part of what you need. In the end, on a deeper level, what you need can also become what you want, if you let it....inshallah....
*It is also not my intention to offend or diminish the importance of this phrase/concept by using it here. But I began to say it in France, where Arabic and Muslim expressions, words, phrases are creeping into French popular culture much like, Black culture has come to dominate populare culture in the United States. People use Inshallah quite a bit , Muslims & non-Muslims alike, not always in a religious context, I noticed. It's the perfect phrase to express a sentiment of something that will happen in the future that you have very little control over. It kind of like something my grandmother and other people from the South always say: "God willing and the creek don't rise..." but not quite, it's hard to translate. I find myself saying or thinking it here (in English) sometimes....
**The people (family members and friends) I'm referring to here happen to be all of the things they accuse me of being, strangely enough.
2 comments:
You know, it's so hard to see that when you are not getting what you want, but what you need, that you are still doing great. I think that all too often, we tend to focus on the fact that things aren't going our way or how we'd planned.
The frustrating part of human relationships is that no one understands when or why we change from the role they know you best for. I tried explaining this concept to my ex once, and he never got it. Why is it that people assume that the you they know is the real you? How do they know that this change isn't a transition back to the real you?
And what's so wrong with changing the person you are; the person you want to be? What is immature or naive about that?
I'm glad that you have the courage to take your life by the reigns and take a risk, even when it's not working out the way you had planned, I know you believe that it's working out the way it should be. You never know who you are going to meet along the way.
Eunice,
It's a hard lesson to learn. Or maybe a hard fact to accept...Either way, we're better for it if we can accept it. I think this is true for our relationships and for our lives independent of them. I said once, with someone I knew, that what that person needed was right in front of them, but they just couldn't see it. I am grateful that I have finally seen what I needed. I know that this may not always be so, but, well, no need to ramble on...you get what I'm saying.
Thanks for reading my blog and thinking about what I have to say. That it resonates with you is such a gift, such a joy to me.
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