Caught Up

Have you ever had one of those days where everything starts wrong? Your sheets are tangled up with your toes, your body feels like garbage, the iced coffee you usually have from Dunkin’ is changed to hot coffee, you get a text from someone you don’t want to talk to, and so the list goes. You start to feel caught between heaven and earth, or perhaps in a slice of existential hell, and it’s hard to understand or find why you’re there.

Today was a whole day wrapped up in a few hours. Sure, it’s only 3 p.m. as I write this, but everything seems to be going sideways, from the coffee I drank to the texts I received. And yet, despite the tremendous adversity of the moment, there wasn’t any other option but to continue.

As much as I pretend this was an adverse situation, we’ve all had these moments where we’re caught between the things we want and need and the nagging feeling that something else is coming. It’s the realisation, at some level, that what we’ve been charging forward about is about to get waylayed, the goalposts moved, the moment seized by someone else’s glory. To be fair, this approximates what it means to be human, but I digress.

In my privilege, I’d suggest that I’ve experienced the adversity of convenience much more than anything. I don’t suffer for the needs of life; I’m well taken care of. I find I suffer, if one could truly call it that, for my mindset that suggests I should be somewhat more than I am in the moment, a hubristic totem to capitalism versus a small signpost of humility. This mentality does more to cause harm to who I am as a person than it does to goad me on to do bigger, better things. It interjects doubt and concern where there simply doesn’t need to be.

The wrestling over these past few weeks, between confidence and confusion, self-worth and self-doubt, the angels and demons on each shoulder, has been something. For every knot in my stomach about what’s coming next, there’s a more profound satisfaction in the connections these processes have forged with the people in my life. Conversations that start with a simple text have turned into hours-long phone calls, a litany of responses, and a meaningfulness that a simple, empty drive-by “How are you?” wouldn’t surface. Regardless of how life takes me, the moments in between have been the most meaningful and impactful.

It’s also humbling to have people tell you that you’ve done something in their lives and they’re willing to give back. It’s perhaps not worth relaying here, but for each person I’ve reconnected with, I’ve intended to impart light to their own stories somehow while they blind me with theirs. From comments like “Well, I know who else is involved here, but I wanted you to focus on YOUR story” to the conversations around life, love, and other mysteries that involve moving across oceans and continents, you get the sense that our interconnections are tighter than ever. I want to live and work for those things beyond anything else.

At some point, I’ll be able to talk a bit more about what’s going on, but suffice it to say, there’s joy in this journey. From learning how to dress corporately to recognising I’m woefully underequipped in some ways to call out the moments of quiet confidence across a career that’s “seen some shit,” I’m finding my 45-year-old self stretched, compressed, rolled out, crushed, and remade almost daily. And let’s not begin the conversations around patience either…she’s fickle.

For everything I’m going through, I also have to remember that I’m one whole of two, and Emma is processing through similar life changes an ocean away. We’re anxiously looking for clarity on her next steps, whether they be in North America or still abroad in the EU. Magnifying this is the house she’s running in my extended absence, the horses, donkeys, and cat that rely on her good graces to thrive in an admittedly welcoming location. But for everything, I’m feeling about my one narrowly defined task, she’s going through double and having to choose where meaningfulness lies between two incredible opportunities.

So, we’re stuck between heaven and earth, between the already and the not-quite-yet, and we must learn to thrive with the ambiguity and the processes that drive us forward. Finding resilience and the will to get up, day after day, to apply our hands to the tasks at hand can often seem daunting, but, in the end, it’s what we’re called to do for the benefit of ourselves and others who come across our paths.

I hope that you, too, find your paths between and can receive the blessing of others as much as you can bless them yourself.

May it ever be so.