I seem to have been born into this world expecting something entirely different.
I thought it was going to be easier. All of it.
I assumed I’d be provided with talents and skills that I’d exercise with ease. If I, say, wanted to be a writer and had some talent, a career as a writer would just unfold for me.
This has not been my experience.
Running, too, has proven to be something I have to work at. And it’s a hobby! Are you supposed to have to work at hobbies?!
No one provided me with this part of the instruction manual. But it does appear that, if I want to run for any distance over about 6 miles, I am really going to have to chip away at that goal. And… wait for it… I might never actually be very good at it.
Huh?
Motherhood. That’s another one. Aren’t I supposed to be bestowed with sage wisdom or some such shit? Because, if so, I need to speak to someone in charge. I’m just making my way over here, fumbling in the dark, hoping for the best. I mean, yeah, it’s going well. But I think some of that is dumb luck, y’all.
I thought I was just supposed to get it. But I’ve had to work at all of it: keeping my focus on anything for more than 2 minutes, running a bookstore, writing consistently, practicing my spiritual practices (it’s right in the name, and still I didn’t know!).
I’ve had this nagging feeling since I was a teenager that maybe I wasn’t very good at life, because I don’t have it all figured out. Sometimes I don’t have any of it figured out. And, inevitably, once I get a handle on anything, everything shifts.
I learned to live with all this shifting and changing when I got sober. The 12 steppers refer to this as “Living Life on Life’s Terms.” Yes, it’s an annoyingly pithy saying. Also, yes, I have to capitalize it like that because that’s what it looks like hanging on a poster in an AA meeting (I’m trying to set the scene here).
But even when I acquiesced to “Living Life on Life’s Terms,” because I didn’t have much choice if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life staring at the bottom of a pint glass, I still felt like I was running perpetually behind. Trying to catch up. My grandmother always said she’d do this or that “when things calmed down.” But they don’t ever calm down, do they? Life just keeps lifing.
Recently, I got to spend a whole weekend at a camp in North Georgia. Liz Gilbert was there. And she said things that continue to reverberate through my soul. As she’s prone to do.
She refers to life as a curriculum.
As in, the entire point is to learn things. Not to rest in the calmness. Not to wade through all the change to get to something at the end.
There’s nothing at the end to get to. The things that we learn from this rapidly shifting existence, that is the point.
Huh.
If there’s nothing to get to at the end, no pinnacle to reach, then I can take comfort in the fact that I’m still learning so many things. It turns out, that is my whole job. Not to be perfect from the start. But to adjust and pivot and love and regroup and forge ahead and mourn and laugh and be.
I’m just supposed to be here, learning the things.
That is the goal.
For this super-studious nerd, the idea of a curriculum feels safe and grounding. Something I can rely on as I learn to trust the process.
But can we maybe incorporate a standardized test or two? You know, to compliment the curriculum? I’m kind of itching to know if my performance is above average. Surely it is, right? (look, no matter what changes, I’ll always be a Virgo. Count on it.)