Cautious Exuberance?
A friend of mine just got back from a year long sabbatical. Actually, it was a year of traveling across this country. What a grand adventure!
She has one daughter, now 20 and away at college. A year ago she realized a deep sense of something missing in her life. Like me, she had gone right through college to grad school to career, getting married, raising a child. Each step preordained, natural, a progression. Still, she had this itch.
She traveled back and forth across this country twice. Along the way she’d stop at innumerable points of interest. And along with her on this journey was a Pez dispenser. She’d been given this treasure from a friend at a party a bunch of us threw her prior to her departure. The friend had grown up with Mary, and it was to remind her of her earlier years (lest she become lost). It was nothing more than a prop, yet Pez ended up being featured in all her pictures from her travels. Mary and Pez in Wisconsin at a cheese shop. Mary and Pez in Wyoming standing mighty close to a buffalo. Mary and Pez in Florida on the beach.
One of the things she realized along the way was this nugget. She had come to think of raising her daughter as something akin to flying a kite, whose string Mary had been holding since birth, guiding that kite through the winds, keeping it aloft. With that daughter now away at college, Mary discovered the truth was as much the opposite. It was the daughter who had, in large measure, been the pivot point, the anchor in Mary’s life.
Of course, children can be a great alibi. ‘I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do, but then,’ pointing to my child, I can say with great affection and total sincerity, ‘I was concerned with larger affairs. I was peopling the earth.’
There’s something more you should know about Mary. At that party which kicked this whole journey off, I met her entire family. There, I learned that her family kidded her about always asking why. A curious child was Mary. She’d look for the meaning in everything. “She’d look for the deeper meaning in a sneeze!” was declared by her sister.
Mary’s advice: should you set out on your adventure, be cautiously exuberant. You’ve got to be exuberant to even brave such an adventure, and cautious because you never know who’s going to be returning. Mary reconnected with parts of herself she had lost touch with through the years, such as spontaneity and the sheer exuberance of life. They were as intrinsic to her being as anything that had been in the forefront since career and family.
Lastly, you’re going to need a prop to take along. It matter not what you choose. What matters is that it will force you to strike up conversations with people along the way, if for no other reason that to get them to take your picture.
Mary’s now back. She’s changing careers. She’s living in the now. She’s full of life. And while we who know her are all happy for her, we’re also a bit jealous. At least, I am.