Hobson's Choice
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Let your life speak
Sitting in the kitchen floor today, with Eleanor giggling at some joke she'd made and Chelsea trying to get in on it, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of rightness about my life, that I am engaged in right work for me.
I spent the early morning hours in Chris's office working on maps and compelling the newest version of the mapping program I use to work. Then I raced home to swipe the bathroom fixtures, get laundry started, and get the house straightened up. Five minutes of meditation, and then off to pick up Eleanor at preschool where I discussed mutual Thanksgiving plans with another mom. Home with Eleanor for lunch, a "project" (described by Eleanor, requiring curling ribbon, scotch tape, kleenex, a "grown-up pen" and a "child's pen"), quiet time. We picked up Jordan from high school, and now I'm back at Chris's office to make some more maps before Jordan leaves and Eleanor needs to get ready for bed.
An idyllic day, highlighted by warm weather and the euphoria of a child on her second day of antibiotics. I need all of this: child and dog and jokes and home and maps. I like to race from the computer to cleaning the toilet to making a "project" and back again.
The first two years of Eleanor's life were so exhausting, I didn't think too much about it. It was just what I did in between catching a few hours of sleep. But since we've moved to Huntington, I've started thinking of this routine as temporary, as a stop-gap before I start up my "real" career again. I've thought that what I'm doing now doesn't count on either the "mom" or the "work" front. Sometimes I want to hide from my stay-at-home-mom friends how much I do work, and I want to hide how little I work from my working-mom friends. I've thought myself lazy because of how much I'm enjoying my life right now.
But this afternoon, in that moment of sitting on the floor, I knew that I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. This hodge-podge is where I'm meant to be, at least right now. I'm kind of hoping to give the lie to the old adage, "do one thing and do it well."
Let your life speak.
Parker Palmer writes: "some thirty years later, "Let your life speak" means something else to me, a meaning faithful both to the ambiguity of those words and to the complexity of my own experience. 'Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.'" (from Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation)
4:03 p.m. - 2005-11-15
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