Or: why in the hell in these tough economic times did my family and I up and move (no new job, no big payoff from selling the house, friends and a great yard and a starbucks three blocks away, people we truly miss seeing every day) to an island for chrissakes, where we would be starting over again. am I lying awake at night? yes. is my poor sweet loving husband sprouting gray hairs and rubbing them with ink-stained fingers from scanning the classifieds? yep. Is the cat pissed off, the dog sulking, the extended family in a tizzy and not necessarily a nice, pleasant tizzy? well, come on, it's me for goodness sake! me, a river guide for twenty years who rowed trip 99 while 6 months pregnant, when most moms-to-be would be getting pedicures. Me, who said one day I think I'll go to law school and at age 35 did. Me, who moved with said sweet husband so he could change careers all the way across the country in the worst heat wave south Texas had seen in a hundred years in an un-air conditioned Isuzu at 7 months pregnant. Me, who called the aforementioned hubby 10 months later and said give them your notice I've started packing when I could no longer take living in south florida anymore and the fact that hubby worked 7 days a week. Me, who said the day after 9/11 when we were camped out in California let's move to Idaho. Now it's not to say I am the one making all the decisions, but let's just say when there is a leap to be had I don't mind lining up for it, and the edge is never as scary to me as the thought of not attempting the leap. that inverted what if, meaning, what if I didn't try. what if that is our dream over there and we just sit here because...because it is easier to sit than it is to haul oneself up and head for the edge?so I do catch a bit of hell from the naysayers, not so easy to simply brush them off when they are doing the naysaying around the thanksgiving table or during a friendly sunday afternoon chat. yes, it is me, the unpublished (mostly) writer who is not on the NY Times bestseller list. so what can I possibly know? what I know is that we are trying. I am trying and writing and it is not in me to do it any other way (and thank god I can point at JK Rowling and all those rejection slips she got).
The doctrine of constructive imbalance holds that from the point of greatest imbalance comes the point of greatest stability, that is, to be "perfectly balanced" is actually a form of net zero movement and thus, net zero growth. so I must be in one heck of a great place these days, the last great uprooting (home, family, cats all freaked out, dog pouting, mail being forwarded but to where, the landing spot not yet clearly foreseen. Ah, imbalance and those dang rocks squinching us into other tight fits, the hard places we as adults mostly, greatly, fervently, aim to AVOID. I think once the college-searching-exploring phase is over (over because, why?) oh, the ticking time card, bing! time to get a job (tick tick tick) bing! time to settle down and get married (tick tick tick) bing! time to invest for the future (uh, screwed up on that one). anyway, I think, I think we start to hunker down and grab hold of what makes us secure, the unknown is not a bing! on the clock (time to throw your life all willy nilly does not seem to bing! it's way onto the dotted line, and for many, many many many, that is a good thing). until, oh hell, until you wake up and the cat on your feet and the inkling as if from a dream that oh hell, here it comes, a thought. it usually is preceded by the phrase what if.
a thought that this is not where, this is not the what the when or even, possibly, the who with and so you can snuggle those toes into the cat and dream of the big screen tv sale the next nine holes the conveyor belt that your life happily, easily, neatly and so amazingly perfectly seems to fit upon, and just let it go back into the ether of dreamland.
but of course just even having had the inkling, there you have it. marked, like some unforeseen GPS tab that now has you: "go point two miles to left turn approaching unforeseen intersection of dissatisfaction and the right turn toward what you know is also out there." It is all about free will though, right? wasn't that in philosophy 101? and so no one says you have to pay attention to the inkling or even acknowledge it (maybe it was just the lasagna). in fact the rewards for not listening! it's all settled then, the tidy checks on the list, maybe a gold star if you make enough money, buy the right car, stand on whatever side of the line seems right.
but then there are folks like me, oh I know, maybe we are the thorns in the heels of all those happy conveyor belt riders, waving to us and wringing their hands ohmygodthereshegoesagain and her poor family! yanked from the stability of a life that wasn't exactly what they wanted, no scratch that. it's not like I haven't attempted the secure and set life (husband, check, child, check, costco membership, check, I think said child even played soccer once, uh, and oh yeah, I drive a station wagon). now hear this: the life was fine, the people we shared it with amazing and wonderful and we love them. hey, it's not like we booked a one way to the international space station people. there is email and facebook and a marvelous modern thing called air travel. and so, unlike my ancestors Daniel McKissick and his young wife Cattron, who in 1760 with their two teensy chirruns little Daniel and Isaac, packed the trunk, walked the rocky path from the farm and family and a perfectly secure life in Scotland, and climbed up the gangway onto the ship Fane (you're going where? Daniel's mother in law likely said, okay, shrieked) and left to never return again. just up and left, because they were looking for a different, hopefully better, hopefully better for them, life.
what we want, how do I say this? it was just time, simply time. the cocoon was wearing thin, there were peeks outside to something that seemed to feel the direction we needed to fly.
and so to the rocks. the security we feel, feet tucked against the tabby fur, eyes gloating on the new car in the drive the dinner with the boss the grade on the child's report the glint and gloss of our organically tended lawn in comparison to our neighbors trugreen is not reality. think of it, we cling to what feels secure because outside that bing! that nicely moderated conveyor of whatcomesnext the earth is flat and the edge, the unforeseen edge is out there, all rocky and no map. all those what ifs and what might happens are not reality, just projections of fear, the thing under the bed with the rumply hair and the clanking in the closet and the big fat thumb of a boss or the portfolio manager's tsk-tsk-tsking and saying you really out to have invested more, like twenty years ago the voice in the back of your mind that sounds so strangely like your mother in law's that shrills what are you thinking? each time you think maybe we could.
now imagine a voice that says Go for it! you can do it! you'll never know unless you try! and think of teaching a child to ride a bike, or swim, hold a crayon, pull themself up and maybe ogmygod just maybe try to walk. watch out for the edge! watch out for the rocks the mr. fluffy cat sleeping, and for godsakes, watch out for that dotted line! okay, try it this way: a child comes to you and says someday I am going to invent a bloomberenougher thingy that cures cancer and everybody will be happy and no one will be sick! are you going to say what just came into your head (your poor, tired, adult non-dreaming head), something on the lines of no way dork. so think about it, and I'm not saying get in touch with your inner child blah blah blah, I am saying that there is a reason children can easily, efficiently learn multiple languages when they are young and adults cannot; there is a reason they can imagine things we cannot envision or comprehend as adults. they have an ability, a way to see, to hear, to imagine the world differently (piaget's "windows of learning.") if you say to them no, is that in fact, right? is the "all-knowing" adult right to say, no janie, there will never be a bloomberwhatever thingy because, uh, because I don't know of one or how to make one much less dream of one? dear mr. gates, mr. hawking, madame curie, mr. gallileo: you screwed up because you thought of things no one else could, or did.
the rocks will look different when their beauty is not clouded with how hard they are, how they feel wobbly and unsteady at first below your feet, how heavy they can be, or how many of them there are on the shore of a new, unforeseen adventure.
