Different missions, and an unknown rendezvous
My massage therapist is Mormon, and was explaining to me the details involved in mission trips this morning as I was on the table. She told me that when the kids are dropped off at the training center, they send the missionaries one direction and the families in another, and they will basically only have mail contact for the next two years.
It immediately struck me as analogous to my own situation. Two years ago, A was sent one direction and I another. Only I will not get him back now that my 2-year mission into the land of grief has passed, and while I believe I am skirting the border of this strange land, I don’t know that I have my ticket home yet. It seems I will have to walk, and that will take some time. In some ways, I’m sure it will take all the time I’ve left to me.
These separations must be temporary, but of course some are more temporary than others. I know what it is to miss a person you love for 2 years, but I have no way of knowing when my reunion will be, when my mission will be over. It could be 3:14 this afternoon, or it could be 50 years from now. If it were the former, I could stay positive and look forward to that reunion with a smile on my face, but it’s hard to look forward to something for 50 years and keep the same level of enthusiasm, untainted by sadness and longing. Plus, there’s the fact that I’m not particularly interested in dying at 3:14 this afternoon. It’s a weird place to be. And yet it is the place that every one of us is, all the time. Leave it to me to find what is baseline human existence "weird." Where else would I be but between birth and death?
I’ve been reading everyone’s "bucket list" posts, and thinking about what, if anything, I had left on mine. I wrote one, maybe 4 years ago, before the movie was out. It was a short list even then, and at this point, everything on it has either been accomplished or become irrelevant as my greater understanding of myself over time made it clear that I didn’t actually want those things. Like being a published author. A dozen people read my words every day; that, it turns out, is enough for me. Or being in a rock band—that was also on the list. However, I find that my independent streak makes staying solo seem the most sensible course of action, (barring an ideal situation which I haven’t managed to find yet). There was a time I wanted to travel the world, but like Dorothy Gale, I’ve realized that everything I could find anywhere else, I could find in my own backyard, or in my own heart. Plus, traveling these days is as onerous in its way as it was a hundred years ago; I’d rather watch a travelogue video.
I never had ambitious plans for myself like a lot of people do. I imagined myself employed, middle-class, and married. Beyond that, I had no specific vision. I know a lot of folks who find their suburban family-centered existence stifling, and far afield from the life they’d envisioned for themselves. I hoped to fall in love, have a decent job, own a home, and have a few kids and dogs. I fell in love twice and skipped the kids, but otherwise, everything else has come to pass. For the most part, it seems like my dreams came true, and I don’t really have a list anymore. I want to get better at the things I’m already doing. I’ll try new things as they strike my fancy; but if I go home after work today, eat dinner, reinstall the toilet, talk to E, play with my dogs, and strum my guitar, and don’t wake up tomorrow morning, I’m okay with that. That’s how I like to spend my days, and in truth, my life has been somewhat more adventurous than I would’ve imagined before. I think I’ve had my share of adventure. But while I have passing fancies of fame and fortune and fabulousness, at the end of the day, I don’t need to be somebody. I just need to be.
Sometimes when I think about what my mission may be, and come up empty, I think "being" may well be it. And if it isn’t, I’d like to request the universe give me a big damn hint. Because right now, the one thing I really and truly want is impossibly out of reach.