Created April 19, 2018 Arranging the Furniture

I always think that if I get things just so, all will be well. The new bedroom set will improve my marriage, the new arena will make me a better rider. I create physical forums into which I imbue my fondest hopes and dreams; they will certainly come true if the stage is set perfectly. I live in the fantasy that having just the right stage will make me play my role better. Or find a role to play.

I envy those brave women who are set adrift in the middle of their lives and are able to go on and make a new one. Maybe not the one they’d put the better parts of their lives creating, but a new one. Working with the “freedom” that for the most part they did not want, they find a new stage upon which to play their role. Or they create a new role to play.

Most often that stage is a new home, close to where they had been in their former lives. Sometimes they find it in a new town or a new state. If they are lucky, they are able to retain parts of their old lives and incorporate them into new ones – their jobs, their friends, their family of origin, their dependent children. These are the women I envy the most. The ones who have been able to keep their core identities while they move into their reimagined future.

I forget the exact line, but to paraphrase, some people find that freedom brings endless possibilities; “while others drown in all that nothingness”. Looking back over the last 14 years, the years which were full of “freedom” for me, I can now clearly see that I drowned. I walked onto a stage upon which to play my new role but in the end, I did not find one. Why not? Excuses abound. Reasons exist. But these do not bring back those wasted years for me.

Those of a philosophic nature would say that no years are ever wasted; they bring to us knowledge of our most intimate selves. They reveal who we are, most especially of who we are when no one is looking. We are always in a constant state of learning whether we know it or not. The catch to all this is that we must notice that we are in class and pay attention to the lessons.

This is what I failed to do. I did not notice that I was being schooled, failed to learn the subject matter and only now have realized that I am flunking the course.

I suppose the right thing to do is to finally be brave enough to look for and create a new stage; to finally find or create a new role. But let’s go back and try to objectively look at my various “reasons” and “excuses” for my perceived failure; to see if I actually did learn anything. Try to see if there is something, anything, that I have learned about myself, or at the very least find anything positive to say about my life or myself during these years of “freedom” that I have frittered away.

And now I find myself exhausted at the notion of even trying such an exercise. It is too daunting. So much easier to state my obvious failings and deficiencies. It is always easier to focus on the negative. Another great line, from the movie “Ondine”: “misery is easy; you must work at being happy”. I wonder why that is, even as I know the answer.

I think, not only for today but for all the tomorrows I can at this moment foresee, I will continue to rearrange the furniture on my sinking ship. I do not feel brave enough to change course.