Last week I was asked if I would be interested in a job with my old team. I was flattered. I have tremendous respect for my former colleagues – I really liked working with them. They are some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. The organization is growing and doing lots of good things. I’m proud to have helped set the stage for where they are. The job would put me closer to family and friends and a viable dating scene. It would pay better. It checks off a lot of boxes for me and I was really tempted to jump at the offer – I mean really tempted. Yet there was something holding me back – as though I had left all of that behind for a reason and I haven’t quite finished whatever it was I set out to do.
For a week, almost two, I’ve been trying to name this hesitancy. I tried to examine and write about the data points and emotions that were coursing through me. I couldn’t get anywhere with it. I revisited posts I wrote about moving to Memphis. I wrote several drafts about why I think I moved away. It brought up a lot of stuff – including some interesting internal debates on whether inspiration comes from comfort and familiarity (safety) or from newness – which, of course, is not an “or” situation. It made me ask myself (several times and in several different ways) what do I want? Where am I going? It made me think about my sense of place and this notion that with an entire world to explore or other places to be, why go back? Can we ever really go back? Those questions, when framed in terms of relationships or Buddhist practice, made me uncomfortable. There are people out there who never settle, who always think the next great person or thing is just over the horizon… there are people who are never satisfied with where they are (in life, in work, in their relationships). I don’t want to be one of those people. I’m actually quite content and at peace, yet always feel this slight tug at the shirtsleeve of desire. Stasis and change. At the heart of these questions about geography or partner or avocation seems to be one’s definition or sense of home.
After a while, when I grow tired of the questions, I fall back on Buddhism and the notion that we are where we are – which may be exactly where we’re supposed to be… and that what we seek, can often be found within… and also nothing stays the same. After a while, when I grow tired of the deep questions, I feel paralyzed and begin to doubt any sense of knowledge (or control) that I might have in this world. I might tell myself, “I know where I am isn’t where I will always be… this is a stop along the way.” Then, I just as quickly tell myself that any attempt at predicting (or steering) the future is silly – I don’t “know” anything. I could meet someone tomorrow who changes my entire trajectory (it’s happened before), I could get hit by a bus, be diagnosed with cancer, get fired, win the lottery… And while none of those things are likely to happen, it feels arrogant (and perhaps closed-minded) to move through life with the certainty that they will never happen or that I have some say in the matter.
The offer to apply for the position (and the subsequent hesitation) has made me think about what I want from life, what I value, and what I had hoped to gain or accomplish by leaving in the first place. For nearly two weeks, I have been sitting with these questions. None of the answers feel satisfactory. I don’t think I had a vision of my future life when I left Bucks County. I think I wanted time, space, distractions, and maybe new challenges. I knew life would be different – it always is after a significant loss. It seemed easier to reconcile or embrace those differences somewhere new. It’s almost as if my mind said, “all of these things – this bar, these people, this work, these streets – are all familiar, and yet none of it is recognizable.” In some respects, that type of upheaval can feel both self-destructive and necessary – and also like the path of least resistance – the easy way out. The harder way, is to sit with the discomfort. To build anew by re-imagining and repurposing the old. At the time, I wasn’t comfortable with that – perhaps not capable of it. I had already done it once or twice and was either tired or “needed” to try something different.
I think, sometimes obsessively, about the changes in my life over these past few years – some losses, some gains, and a whole lot of learning about, and practicing of, introspection. I was never a particularly hard person, or competitive person, or “driven” person, and yet I feel I’ve grown softer, slower, and even more gentle. For a brief while I lived a life full of doing things, meeting people, and going places (concerts, travel, hikes, beaches, and dates). Then I found someone who seemed to make those things better but also showed me different ways of being. That life still has an appeal to me, but in a different way and at a different pace that I can’t quite describe. It’s taken me a long time to get back to thinking life is meant to be shared and explored… and while I recognize that those things can happen just about anywhere (remote towns, seaside resorts, big cities), I suspect I need the crutch of newness and the stimulation provided by having to forge something out of the rough-hewn pieces of a new landscape. This way of thinking is, perhaps, a failure of my imagination… a failure to see how I might craft inspiration out of the old and familiar. I accept that.
The phrase that keeps popping up (not just mentally, but in a number of podcasts I’ve listened to) is from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” in which the reader is asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Going back to Bucks County to work a job similar to what I’ve done before with all of the trappings of a life I’m familiar with but not sure I would recognize, doesn’t feel like the right move – not now. It doesn’t feel like a bold choice to do something with my one wild and precious life. I don’t doubt that there’s a feeling of defeat associated with going back – as though I struck out on my own and didn’t make it. I also suspect that I internalized some of the rejection I had felt. In that sun-kissed version of my life, I offered everything I had (family, friends, home, and place) and was told, “nope, not good enough, not what I want.” And maybe I came to believe that what I had to offer, the life I had built, wasn’t sufficiently large.
What feels closest to the core of not being ready to go back is this lack of vision or inspiration. In that brief encounter that I thought would last a lifetime, I was deeply inspired – almost as if I woke up. Maybe what I’m sensing is some primal knowledge that lightening doesn’t strike the same place twice. Or maybe it’s a fear of being lulled back to sleep. I would love to see my family and friends more. I’d like to make more money. I’d like to be reunited with colleagues who I respect and appreciate. But something about all of that feels too easy. As much as I believe inspiration comes from within, and being present, and can be found in the smallest things, I also think that the familiar has a tendency to dull our senses and send us sleepwalking through our lives. I don’t think I’m ready to test that just yet.