Maybe you've seen those Wells Fargos ads. "Someday we'll have a guestroom," as the couple contemplate their (red?) couch with their snoring friend in the living room.
"Someday we'll make a fortune" is particularly bland -- a way too familiar refrain.
"Someday I'll have a real air conditioner," is my own favorite. The woman is seated in summer garb on the edge of her fridge with mini-fan wafting the soy milk and tofu and figs. Okay I imagine the ad is in California, particularly my backyard Bay Area, where you could rent out your fridge for the cost of an apartment in Des Moines.
Wistful somedays engender so much....
Hope? Naw. Years ago I noticed an unnamed oil company employee's calendar. He was literally counting the days until his retirement in one of these decade long calendars. It was pathetic alright not hopeful.
One day someone may query me as to what finally got me off my duff to fulfill my destiny even though I could come up with umpteen million valid reasons why the time is most certainly couldn't possibly be right now right here to write a book. The reasons only begin with the fact that although I've never been more willing to work with corporate America and have entered the most fertile creative period in my life, virtually all the work leads have dried up since I returned from Asia. Or I get: "Well, you were our pick for this project but our client backed out." Ahem, that's all code for I'm flat broke (in liquid assets anyway).
Now when most people hit a wall, heck, whenever I've confronted a dead-end in past I've tried to bulldoze through. Push even harder. "To the ancient Greeks, the [mythical Minotaur's] labyrinth was a metaphor for life. It was a complexity of twists and turns, deceptive dead-ends, double-backs and long meandering diversions."
These days in the maze of life, I wonder about like a kid, so that when I hit a dead-end, it's simply information: aha, it can't be this way! I simply turnabout and continue along with the game.
So when you ask me again next year or whenever, first I'd credit the universe for filling me with hokmah (that's Hebrew for the wisdom often attributed to artistic works, depicted as a feminine she) and one cannot deny a gift's expression. And a very close second - the last straw when denial collapsed and I realized what the 401K was really for - would have to be this passage in Eckhart Tolle's new book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose:
Many years ago, as a result of a strong inner impulse, I walked out of an academic career that the world would have called "promising", stepping into complete uncertainty; and out of that, after several years, emerged my new incarnation as a spiritual teacher. Much later, something similar happened again. The impulse came to give up my home in England and move to the West Coast of North America. I obeyed that impulse, although I didn't know the reason for it. Out of that move into uncertainty came The Power of Now, most of which was written in California and British Columbia while I didn't have a home of my own. I had virtually no income and lived on my savings, which were quickly running out. In fact, everything fell into place beautifully. I ran out of money just when I was getting close to finishing writing. I bought a lottery ticket and won $1,000, which kept me going for another month.
p.s. In the words of my teacher: Allow yourself to know what you know. Enjoy yourself. (And, yes, I'm still available for part-time work, but I'm not racing around the maze desperately to find it.)
Bonus: The clues (clews) to the labyrinth are always personal. Don't assume you're clueless - you've been in the labyrinth all along. Trust your heart - that's the life-line. More on the symbol of the labyrinth:
"To the ancient Greeks, the labyrinth was a metaphor for life. It was a complexity of twists and turns, deceptive dead-ends, double-backs and long meandering diversions, through which the explorer, having entered, had to find his way in order to confront the monster, half-human/half-divine, which lurked there. Success depended upon another equally profound metaphor: Ariadne's clew. In Greek myth, this clew is the mitos, the ball of thread [mitos is Greek for thread] which Ariadne gave to Theseus, the Athenian hero. By unwinding, the mitos guided him through the Cretan labyrinth that Daedalus [creator of the Minos labyrinth], upon seeing the Egyptian original, had made for King Minos at Knossos. But the mitos is also the life-line, spun and rolled into a ball by the Fates at birth and unraveled throughout one's life. In both senses, it is a guide through life's perplexities; the key is to find your clew and to learn how to follow it, for otherwise you are lost in the maze.
When Ariadne gave Theseus the clew, she showed him how to discover his true path through the labyrinth. There he confronted the most powerful metaphor of all: the Minotaur. The monstrous progeny of the Greek god Zeus and Minos' Queen Pasiphae, the Minotaur combines human flesh with godly spirit (see Box 4, p.25, this issue). Both are important aspects of our being, but one is beastly and grounded in this world, the other divine. To access the latter, we must reconcile and master the former. The object of the maze, then, is not so much to get through it as to defeat what it holds for you, and learn about yourself along the way. When we possess the clew, we no longer fear the outcome of our decisions; we know that we are on the right path." - "Return to the Labyrinth: A Clew to the Function of the Minoan Palaces", by Joseph Alexander MacGillivray, The British School of Archaelogy at Athens
Evelyn, I just wanted to thank you for this posting. I read your blog regularly and find it incredibly inspiring. This post is directly in line with the "what is my purpose" issue I have been dealing with of late. Nice to hear vulnerable similar thoughts from others.
Posted by: kylie | May 11, 2006 at 04:12 PM
It's so exciting to see you do this! Sending good karma your way.
Posted by: Laura Moncur | May 12, 2006 at 05:21 AM