The best way to find your path
is to get lost
| Luellen Smiley |
The throw of the dice this week lands on new directions in living. Before that happens, you have to get lost, detached, and miserable. It messes up your social life, your routines, your comfort, and your partner. Men wonder why women change so often, why we are spirited unicorns one day and mules the next. This comes from the universal need to roam, to feel new sensations and passions, and to find more things to love. Even our closets are overflowing with love: “I love those shoes; I love that coat.” We replace our wardrobes because we need more garments to love.At the crossroads of some moment in time, I stopped loving material things, my partner, my reflection, and went looking for a deeper direction of sensation.This change started last year when my life was tangled up in two projects that were not progressing. As long as someone didn’t raise the curtain on my imaginary life, I stayed right there, like a gearshift left in neutral. When failure and rejection continued to knock me on the shoulder, I welcomed the familiar knock and remained sationary.The exact moment I decided to shift gears was a painful one. I let go of both projects that were obstructing my motion. I have extracted the natures of the projects because they really are irrelevant. After I let go and watched those long-term efforts just dangle from boxes, notebooks, and letters of correspondence, the straight of my back curved. Where is my direction? Where are any of us going anyway, except away from that moment in which we have no control?I spent the first few months mumbling to myself at Henry’s Market, in Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and in the car, when I was able to shift gears ferociously. If I asked why hadn’t this happened and that happened, I was then distracted by some woman in the car next to me who was having more fun in her convertible talking on her cell phone. Routines were becoming burdens, and my favorite places of comfort were getting too crowded.Miraculous incidents entered into this period. I met a woman who was successful and joyful and who had no overriding motive in sharing her life with me. People came into my private life without invitation and sometimes laid a little footing for the new life I was about to build. Encouragement came from writing columns, reading letters, and taking those long, solitary road trips to Taos. I felt like I was sleeping, but even in that state of detachment people were finding me and shaking me up.During Christmas, we took a trip to Taos, and while the flu changed the course of the trip, it allowed me time to watch the stars from my bedroom. I remembered one of the faintest memories of my childhood. I cannot even recall the place I was or who was there. Most certainly, it was not my father and mother. We were camping out, and I was in a sleeping bag on the hard gravel ground. It was so unfamiliar to me, the simplicity of the natural surroundings, the heavy, black balm of tranquility, and the brightness of each star. I laid awake most of the night talking to my fellow campers, and at some point they said to go to sleep. I could not close my eyes. The adventure had swept me into a state of alertness, the kind that makes you feel extraterrestrial. That night must have taught me to welcome new adventures. Sometimes these kinds of nights have ruined months of my life, but most definitely, at the end, I have sprung up with a new line of faith.After this Christmas visit, I returned to my blank life and started to make a few lines of progress. Still, it was a façade of motion, not the true birth of energy. And then another season passed, and there I was again in Taos. It was as if someone else dropped down into my soul and engaged all my gears at once. Without second-guessing or considering the probability of failure, I leaped into a new direction. Again, I am leaving out particulars because it is not the direction I took or what I chose because it could be anything. We all want to roam and love and find some nugget of truth at the end of the road. I think women need to roam more now than men. We just realized that nothing can stop us, and if we do not take advantage of that freedom, we are missing the big scene in our home movie.After I announced the new direction, and SC followed along willingly, we arrived at the new destination. As the plan opened, the soil beneath our feet turned in our direction. Things are beginning to grow; buds of creativity I never imagined are striking at me at all hours of the night. Friendships like flags waving over distant countries are inviting us to join. Strangers are stopping to talk and even help build this new footing. It was only a matter of shifting gears. Within this new garden of growth I stumble and ask for direction, and miraculously I get it. Any dice to throw? E-mail it to folliesls@aol.com.
