Being Caretakers

I thought I was going over to her house to inquire about a room for rent. But when I saw her underlayer of blue hair feathered over her professional collar, I knew I was there to engage with a part of myself. She asked me if I had questions about her home, but all I wanted to know was how she could commit to managing change in international corporations and retain her flair, her vitality. We talked about how we live increasingly precarious lives in a world that is crumbling. We acknowledged how our personal and collective resources are dwindling – environmentally, psychically, and energetically – even as the demands for us to be nimble and fortified increase. The pressures I feel are not just my own. All of us who step back and really look at our lives face the question I toss and turn over at night: “How do I create a life that meets my basic needs and gives me a sense of purpose?”

Being in transition, that question is urgent and critical. Building my new life north of San Francisco is a unique time for me to choose where to live, how to make a living, and where to place my loyalty. Through the painful process of choosing “yes” or “no”, over and over, with our time, money, relationships, and commitments we come to know, sooner or later, who we really are. This isn’t who we think we are when we dream of living a new and better life, but who we actually find ourselves to be when faced with the exhilarating and terrifying process of being responsible for filling a blank slate. Are we being courageous or reckless? Are we taking a stand out of love or ignorance, idealism or denial? Are we creating a stable foundation or needlessly draining our vitality with fear-based decisions?  Do the things we sacrifice enable us to grow or compromise our essence? Are we building a more deeply soulful life, or simply creating some noise and chaos before settling back into the same old ruts?

A few days later, I was back on the floor again on all fours sobbing like a child. “Why did I do this? Why did I come here? Why did I leave it all behind? Why did I do any of it?!” Was this the dark night before the dawn, the agony of birth – pushing, pushing right before a new reality rushes into being? Or was this the punishing reality of challenging the rules and starting to wonder if I’ve been delusional, perhaps all of my life? What got me up and drying my eyes was a sudden insight that it’s impossible to face, let alone answer, any of these questions without an anchor. If we don’t know what we live for, we won’t know what to defend and what to compromise, and we will forever be swept off course by the next opinion, the next scare, the next unexpected bump in the road. With so many places to live, people to meet, and things to do with limited time, money, and energy, I was being fragmented, drained, and losing my purpose.

I sat down to write about all my fears and everything I had done to get to this place, and what emerged was the essence of what I love. I realized that the despair and regret I was feeling is what happens when we lose the thread, when we lose what matters most to us, when we are trying to recover something precious by backtracking to moment we let it go. Portland is gone. My volunteer management career is gone. Laurelwood and my past relationships are gone. What they each could have been and what they were in their best moments, slipped away through one experience after the next. If chastising myself was enough to bring them all back, I would. But my role in their passing was but one, small influence. To see any element of my past, including myself, as a failure is short-sighted and irresponsible. It is simply in the nature of all things to change. What matters is what I have come to understand about myself and the world through grappling with what broke my heart to lose.

Talking with the woman with the blue-feathered underlayer, I realized how familiar and easy it would be for me to just dye my hair, go back to school for organizational development, and renew my passport. But this would only inevitably lead to me berating myself for not being strong in the way she is, and missing the joy and service of living my own purpose. What I really long for issn’t this woman’s life, but her confidence in who she is, what she is committed to, and the sacrifices she has made in service of that. What moved me most in our conversation was when I described the way I walk through a city and see the trees that used to grow there shimmering translucent over the buildings and streets. I ache for those trees that felt their kin fall. And I ache for each person who walks those streets with their feet shielded from the cool, soft earth they were meant to touch. I breach the crest of the highway out of Central Valley and feel my heart burst into life at the first sight of Northern California’s tree-covered hills. I kneel at the foot of the twisted elderly oak and feel the entire grove receive my tension and worry. They cradle me and whisper to me, and I want nothing more than to learn their song by heart and sing it all day long.

The thread I am left holding is wilderness and soul work. That is what I came here for. That is what has comforted and grounded me at each step. That is what I have invested in. It may or may not provide the answers I seek regarding how to make a living with integrity. It may or may not provide the community and friendships I’m hungry for. But it is what I am committed to seeing through. The thought that I can do this, in whatever hours I have left after earning my keep, with whatever parts of me remain awake after doing what needs to be done, keeps me going. And the idea that there are others out there who hear the same song, or long to hear it, and are waiting eagerly, perhaps without even knowing it, to meet me. One day soon, we will share our joy, rage, grief, beauty, tenderness, and longing, giving each other the gift of seeing and hearing. And each receiving the gift of being seen and heard.

Derrick Jensen writes that the way to survive this world – what many are referring to as the collapse of an empire – is to become a caretaker. And to embody this role, we must understand what is entrusted to us. Those of us fortunate enough to feel connected to a place can care for it. Those of us with families can care for them. And those with a cause can nourish it in whatever ways we can. Sometimes running from what threatens us is an act of cowardice, but sometimes it enables what we take with us to survive sheltered within our hearts. Without knowing what we live in service to, what is uniquely ours to care for, anything we do will feel empty. Anything we sacrifice and anything we embrace will be pointless. But knowing what we live for makes even the toughest decisions clearer and the most difficult losses endurable.

Nancy

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it, you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.” – William Stafford