Do What You Love

    It is becoming more and more important as I wander through this land of middle age that I do things that bring me joy, or as Joseph Campbell said, "follow your bliss". There is a sense of urgency about it though sometimes, which I have to keep in check so I don't dive into panic mode as I contemplate all of the things I have yet to do, discover, experience, but not the required time anymore to do them. Perhaps this means I am smack in the middle of a midlife crisis? In any case, the idea of the midlife crisis is no longer a distant, comical thing for me... it is no longer an idea... it is a reality. 

    Crisis might be too strong a word for what I am describing. This is not a dangerous thing. It isn't a calamity. It doesn't involve catastrophic events that have me taxed beyond my abilities to cope. It isn't a loud thing. And it isn't a totally obvious thing either. It is more of a quiet thing. Quiet but persistent. More of a whisper in my ear when I wake in the morning, or as I go about my day, or at 3:00 am when I can't sleep and the stories of my life are swirling in my mind with a vengeance. It is quiet but it is there, and I can't help but hear it.

    It tells me things I always knew but never acted on. It jolts me, pulling me out of the humdrum and the routines and the bills and the automatic ways I do things in this life. It tells me a bunch of things that aren't new at all: life is short, time is precious, it all goes so fast. It asks me questions like, "What are you waiting for?" and "Who are you, apart from all of the things you have to do to live in the world every day?" The most pressing questions these days are also the most frequent: What is it that you love to do? What is that thing, or those things that transport you out of the ordinary, and into a realm that can only be defined as special? What is it that makes you lose your sense of time and space, that pulls you totally out of the moment but yet keeps you in it all at once? What is that thing that makes you feel connected to the deepest, happiest, most authentic part of yourself? 

    These questions have surfaced in my life often, from a young age, so I am pretty familiar with them. I've always been a person who asks big questions. What I am not familiar with though is the immediacy, the sense that I must act NOW... or else! What I am not familiar with is these questions no longer having an airy, theoretical slant to them, an intellectual pondering, something I could think about but keep safely at a distance. No, these questions have pulled me firmly to the ground and are keeping me there. They are loaded with feelings, hopes and dreams. These questions can't be just thought about or ignored anymore. My 52 year old self won't allow it.

    Although my 50-plus status has contributed to the state in which I now find myself, it involves more than just aging for me. I know deep down that one of the main reasons I am now thinking more regularly about how I want to spend the rest of my life is that I removed the wine from it. My lounge visits and tipsy lunches with friends had become like one of my hobbies really. It was something to do to fill the time between work, chores and parenting, and to take the stress off of work, chores and parenting. It was a hobby I liked, but it did take up a lot of time, and sometimes too much time was spent recovering from said hobby. It was also a hobby that took over other hobbies and interests... the other things I used to do just faded into the background.

    But lately, these other things have been reappearing into my life, one by one. I am rediscovering my love of writing, and am actually not just thinking about writing but am actually doing it. I took the plunge yesterday and treated myself to a beautiful guitar, one with a smaller body than the guitar I've had for the past 25 years, and playing it last night for 3 hours was heavenly. I am thinking about possibly singing/performing again. Basically, I am starting to remember what it is I love to do, what makes me tick, what makes me connected to who I am, deep down. 

    I've decided that it is okay to feel this sense of urgency and that it is okay to have the pressing questions come and visit me regularly. It is only in listening and accepting the questions that I will know what it is I need to do next, the next place to put my feet, or what direction to place them. I know now at a feeling level (not just a thinking level) that life is indeed way too short to waste it doing things that do not bring me joy, and that do not reflect my truest self. It really is. Everything that has been said about the passage of time being much too fast is completely true. There is nothing partially true about it. In the end, we owe it to ourselves to do what we love.

    

What One Year With No Wine Has Taught Me

     Recently, I celebrated achieving my goal of reaching one year without alcohol. I decided to give up the wine (my beverage of choice) on July 30th, 2019, mostly out of curiosity, but partly out of a sense of becoming aware that, for me, the benefits of wine consumption were becoming more and more overshadowed by the lousy parts of it. I wanted to find out what it would feel like- physically, emotionally and mentally- to not have any alcohol in my system for a year. So last summer, I began the journey...    

    There are so many things I could write about, as I reflect on what it has been like for me, but something that stands out for me is how giving up the booze has presented the opportunity for me to come face to face with myself, demons and all, and to handle things differently. I'm reading a fabulous book right now by Pema Chodron, "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times" that is resonating so much with me because she talks about how we often react to "discomfort" in our lives (and I am taking this to mean mostly "emotional discomfort") when we encounter uncomfortable situations:

"Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape-- all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain...There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge..." (14).

    When I think of what much of the past year has been for me, it has been a meeting of my edge, as Pema calls it. I love that description. I'm not saying the past year has been awful, or miserable, because I gave up the wine. But it has definitely been "edgier". Without a doubt. And by choosing to not blunt that edge with a luscious red or crispy white, this meant I've often rubbed up against the hard spots, and as a result, felt uncomfortable. So the biggest task of this past year has been learning how to handle discomfort, instead of running from or trying to manipulate it in some way. 

    I was partly prepared for this kind of thing because I've been meditating fairly regularly for over 20 years now. Meditating has provided me often with the opportunity to come face to face with my discomfort while I am sitting, and thoughts and feelings arise, as they will. Meditation is in many ways the opposite of running, or numbing, or distracting, or manipulating. In those moments, when you experience discomfort while meditating, you simply acknowledge what is happening, breathe, and notice things. I say simply, but this is probably the wrong word to use because there is nothing simple about just sitting there while you are being bombarded with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings (which is why many people hate meditating, and why of course, they probably should do it regularly, but this is another blog entry entirely)... But I digress... My point is that meditation helped me greatly this past year.

    I've been thinking a lot of this discomfort idea, and have come to the conclusion that it is at the heart of many problems people face. Although some people on the planet grew up learning how to deal with discomfort in healthy ways, I think many of us did not. Many of us grew up thinking it wasn't desirable to feel intensely negative emotions at all and the best thing to do when experiencing them was to run, distract, ignore, etc. In fact, many of us came to think that extreme emotional discomfort was to be avoided at all costs, and that it might actually destroy us somehow should we allow ourselves to experience it fully. So we grew up believing all of that, when actually, there is a whole other story that can be told about discomfort. The truth is that discomfort is normal, okay, that we won't be destroyed by it, that it doesn't last, that we can handle it, and so on. But we only discover that truth when we sit still and stop running long enough.

    So if I had to say what my biggest lesson has been this past year going alcohol-free, it would be that I can sit with emotional discomfort now more than before without freaking out about it and without telling myself stories that only make the discomfort worse. I can meet my edge without obsessing over the wounds that the edge might cause. I can do this, and when I do this, I become stronger, more resilient emotionally. Although I could do this before I quit drinking, I couldn't and didn't do it consistently. It was only after giving up the vino that this happened on a more regular basis. So in following through with my goal, a whole new way of living has been opened up to me, and it's pretty cool.

    I still haven't poured myself a glass of wine, even though my year-long experiment is now over, and I'm not sure when and if I ever will again. When I set out to do this, it wasn't for forever, as I know that I am not a forever type of woman, but I do know that some of the gifts that have been born out of this past year have indeed been priceless to me, and so for now, that is motivation enough to continue on this path.