A FEW MORE MILES OUT TO SEA

A few more miles out to sea and the shoreline is still visible in the distance. Because of this I feel a remnant of the sorrow and remorse I was so immersed in last week. There is a grieving and a longing to go back to something that is no longer available to me. And there is a lot of fear about the dangers of the waters ahead.

But last week for the most part that grief broke down the dam and flooded out of me in a few short hours and at least ninety-six tears, leaving me clean-washed and hushed in wonder- you could almost say “born-again.” At the end of Friday’s counseling session I said, “I feel great right now but I sense is a snarling beast just outside the door, ready to break down this thin measure of protection.” She said, “The work you have done today is permanent. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to do…”

In the last five years of the corporate job from which I was recently fired, I was beginning to buy into a mind-set. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a bad job. It was about protecting the environment, to the extent that a corporation can do such a thing. But I was beginning to like the solitude of hotels, the anonymity, the freedom from community. I am introverted, to a fault. The fact that I was on the road nearly half the time safely exempted me from my responsibilities to friends, family and garden. And although I paid lip service to the ideal of a lifestyle of nonconformity, in practice I was doing very little to support this.

I used to work as a lab analyst in a sewage plant. Every day I would bring in a stack of CDs. Even before that, I would bring in a stack of cassettes. The speakers were carefully set around the lab for maximum separation. When somebody asked me what I did for a living I would say, “I listen to music while performing lab tests.”

The question is, can one make a living doing what one loves? Of course from a Zen standpoint one should love what one does, regardless. And, as I’ve blogged before, I don’t ask rhetorical questions. Perhaps it’s a sense of middle-class entitlement that makes me wonder these things. I wonder these things because the next chapter is unwritten, the sea ahead is dark and uncharted, and yet amidst the insecurity and anxiety I am beginning to reconnect with an older, deeper-seated bliss, one that flows through a stream all the way back from childhood.

I am beginning to think the answer lies in opening outward, sharing the gifts I have and receiving the gifts that others have to offer me. The breath of creativity is drawn in solitude, but it can’t stay there, in those lonely hotel rooms. Since I lost my job I have experienced an unbelievable resurgence of connection with my friends, wife and community. It has sustained me. Because of it I can keep sailing. I realize I am not the only “poor boy” in this boat. I am a full participant in the human condition. Everyone has something to struggle with and something to offer. Nothing is certain.

Well, no, not exactly. The future is uncertain, but there are many certainties, all falling under the blanket heading love. Finding the words and the melodies for these certainties- there’s a worthy goal for the voyage ahead.