Well, the Life I Should be Leading certainly does not include 3am Nutter Butter binges, that's for sure!
Yesterday, I started Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin. Mortenson is a hardcore mountain climber who fails on an ascent attempt at K2. He gets disoriented and lost in the mountains and wanders into a very remote Pakistani village, where he stays for a while to recover. He is inspired by the children of the village and vows to return and build a school for them. He raises money in the states, comes back, builds the first school, meets all kinds of great people, learns many important lessons along the way, starts a foundation, and now has built 55 schools -- especially schools for girls -- in very remote areas largely run by the Taliban. Up until this fateful trip when he discovers his life's work, he lives in his car and works part-time as an ER nurse just to finance climbing expeditions.
I love to torture myself with books like this. I've got some deluded sense of self-importance going on that says I should have been doing something meaningful and heroic during all these wasted years. I should have been serving with dignity and grace in some horrible, remote, desperately poor place, preferably some place very, very dangerous.... maybe some place with terrible factions led by evil warlords that I have to outwit and enormous mosquitos and lots of dirt. But, even sweaty and dirty and probably starving, I will be beautiful, of course, because of the purity of my mission. On the cover of the best-selling book I write about this mission is a breathtakingly beautiful picture of me wearing a head scarf. I have very luminous and pure eyes.
The very dangerous thing about this fantasy for me is that it leads to an insidious dissatisfaction with the possibilities available to me that aren't Grand and Meaningful and Important. I'll have to ask my siblings, but I suspect that we each have a small voice in the back of our heads telling us we should be living Big lives.
Hmmmm, live in a one bedroom in Burien and be a manager somewhere or Sacrifice Myself to Save Needy People in some God-Forsaken Place. It contributes a great deal to this paralysis and it's got to stop. I've got to let go of the Life I Should be Living and live the life I am living. Well, I am, of course, living the life I am living, but I'm not living it very well, am I? Right this very second, though, I think I am living it the only way it can be lived.
Hey, by the way, I didn't eat any more Nutter Butters today!
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2 comments:
I suggest looking at Bill O'Hanlon's work on "The Four Signals" for finding life's calling:
here it is in PDF format.
I don't know about the sense of "a grand life". I do feel that my life is important, especially now that I am a mother. No matter what else I do, I know I am (at least for some time) the most important person in 2 lives. But, I do know what you mean that there is a sense in our family of What We're Capable Of, and Not Wasting Our Gifts. I think you can let yourself off the hook, though. Because as both Mike and I have defined it, What We're Capable Of is finding some reasonably interesting vocation that allows us to live reasonably comfortable lives. But certainly not Greatness or Immortality or To Be Remembered in Great Writings. For me, the real meaning of life will come from a great sense of self-awareness, self-enlightenment, and impacting the lives of others in positive ways.
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