Life

It's interesting to me that the older I get, the answers that I struggled so hard to find are somehow finding me.  And they turn out to be not really answers at all.  What I thought as a younger person was cut and dried, black and white, turns out to have so many variables and shades of gray I can't begin to process it.  And yet, at the very root of it, it is indeed cut and dried, black and white:  Does a situation or an action hurt me or others, or does it not?

Throughout my life I've tried so hard to do the right thing, be a good person, serve others, work hard, prove my worth.  Some might call it working for my own salvation.  I would have denied it, of course, but I definitely had that Puritan style work ethic.  I still am not fully sure why I have struggled so much about my own worth, but I've decided it doesn't really matter, because somehow I've begun to truly internalize the feeling I sought, that slogan we see so much, "I am enough."  Simple to learn and say, but truly feeling it to the bone?  Not so much.

I used to lament that I was "smart, but not clever."  At first it was a defense, a mechanism to make a joke about something I felt very acutely.  I've missed so many jokes in my life, my cluelessness begat my being the butt of them.  Now, though, I have come to appreciate that lack of cleverness which in many of the people I love results in the challenge of a very, very busy mind.  Those busy minds find it hard to slow down, to keep things simple, to simply accept and not struggle to find solutions.  

In my own case, I finally figured out I got headaches every time I tried to find solutions and mentally threw up my hands and said "Okay, I'm not smart enough to think a way out of these situations."  Strangely, the act of giving up on finding a solution, or even taking responsibility for finding a solution, sometimes seemed to make the solution simply - happen.  Or not.  But either way, I had fewer headaches and I kind of liked that.

In reality, my mind as a young person was quite busy - maybe I was clever after all - and often meant that it took hours and hours to get to sleep as my mind raced.  I learned to listen to classical music to drift off, whatever would get my mind off the racetrack.  During the day, though, I raced.  Lots to do, think about and achieve.  In my late 20's I had a butterfly rash on the face, and my doctor was concerned.  I had a high antinuclear antibody test and he was concerned I was developing lupus.  I freaked out a little bit and read everything I could about lupus and autoimmune diseases.  I latched on to the idea that stress and anxiety contribute to these, and so decided to turn myself from a type A person to a type B person.

Whether or not that affected the followup lab or was just a coincidence, I'll never know, but when I went back, the rash was gone and the titer was back to normal.  I was also feeling more content, and so decided that since it seemed to be working, I'd stick with it and see what happened.  I became committed to avoiding stress rather than enduring it.  That led to a different set of problems in terms of conflict avoidance, but I digress.  I'm still working on that! 

I still have that work ethic, and still struggle with a guilt reflex when I'm not busy or doing work that's "meaningful" or for a "higher purpose."  Sounds pompous when I put it that way in writing.  In reality, it's definitely a struggle with feeling as if one is not enough, as if one must strain and strive continually.  It's been a lifelong journey to change that and thankfully, I'm starting to see some progress.

Most people I've known who are truly, utterly serene are those who find peace and joy in the simple tasks.  They don't compare their pace to others but do the work honestly and to the best of their ability.  Emulating that, in my view, is worth doing.

The effect of that has been that at some point in the last few years, I was startled to realize that I was content.  I hadn't thought about being inadequate or defective in I couldn't recall when.  It's not like life had stopped - things weren't perfect "out there," but for some reason, I was unbothered by the absence of perfection in work, in personal life, in the house, in my relationships.  

I'd lost family and friends to death, the kids were in various struggles, work was sometimes overwhelmingly challenging, but underneath all that, there was peace.  I wish I could say I knew how it happened, but I do know one thing, and that's I didn't do it.  It crept in while I was minding my own business, cleaning the sink, doing the laundry, and watching the red cardinals in the tree outside my window and thanking God for the opportunity.

Maybe that's the secret, then.  Just live, let live, try to do no harm, be grateful and let God do the rest.