I love that little chinking sound when something clicks into place. It’s like hearing something that doesn’t sound quite right until with a little nudge, something that has been misaligned suddenly drops into place. It’s similar to the visual effect when you’re putting together a puzzle without benefit of looking at the picture on the box (do people really even put puzzles together anymore?) You fit together a number of pieces and suddenly an image takes shape, “Oh I see!” You exclaim in delight, “It’s part of a horse–see, here’s the neck and main and one of the ears.” Now that you know what you’re looking at, you can quickly find the other pieces that are similar in color and texture to the horse–brown versus blue that must be part of a sky or lake…Now that you know what you’re looking for, the image quickly takes shape.
I had kind of an ah ha moment today. I don’t have the full picture, but put together a few pieces that are getting me closer to seeing the image hidden in the puzzle. The little click has sounded that means another gear has shifted in unlocking some mysteries I’ve been puzzling. My gratitude and the focus of tonight’s blog is for the movement toward clarity not so much what the clarity is about. I have for a long time been asking questions about my “what’s next,” what I am meant to be doing with my life. For a long while my “what’s next” was connected to finding a new job and rejoining the work world after a period of unemployment. But even as I was applying for work around the country I was pretty clear that getting a new job more about how I was going to make ends meet and buy some time for me to discover what I am meant to be doing and how to get myself in a situation where I could actually do it.
Two important pieces clicked in for me today, neither of them rocket science and neither is a particularly new revelation. It was the combination of both thoughts at the same time along with an idea that created a significant convergence for me today. The first is that I love music–it has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, and more specifically I have been a singer-songwriter now for 40 years. Yikes! A songwriter is what I am, not what I do. More than once I have turned away or allowed myself to be distracted from living out that gift and becoming a recording and performing artist. In the last 10 to 15 years or so I’ve told myself that I’ve let too much time go by and am now too old to pursue this dream, and that it was in fact merely a dream. And even though part of me (a small, shrinking part) protested that no, one is never too old to pursue a dream, I was slowly succumbing to the notion that one could age away their dream. Until today.
For some reason this I was thinking about my music. “Coincidentally” a daily inspiration message I receive via email encouraged:
“Wayfinders of every culture sing their way into their true nature. Even better is playing an instrument, which often takes so much brain focus that words fall away. Today, when you have time alone in the car or the kitchen, sing your favorite song. If possible, put on a recording or the radio and sing along. Don’t try to sound good. And don’t hold back. Sing as if no one can hear you.” (From Martha Beck)
The third and final piece simply popped into my consciousness from out of the blue. A work colleague loves to play basketball. He probably plays three or four times a week, at least a few couple of hours each time. At 60 years old he often plays against college students three times younger than he is and not only holds his own, but excels, often playing the young guys into exhaustion. He particularly likes playing against young opponents against whom he hasn’t played. “They like to talk trash at me asking me ‘What have you got, old man?'” He told me, then grinned, “Then I show them what I’ve got!” Suddenly this morning it dawned on me that saying that I’m too old to do something with my music is really fear talking, an excuse for not pursuing something I once loved to do. My colleague has not let his age stop him from a excelling in an endeavor for which he has great passion, enthusiasm, and talent. Why am I letting my age stop me from even trying to excel in mine?
I am grateful for this convergence of ideas that came together today. I don’t have the entire picture in place yet, but a few new elements have filled in to make at least a portion of it clearer. The more I put together, the clearer it will become. Thoreau said, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” It seems to me that as I begin to move in the direction I am being pointed the life I have imagined, the next steps will become clearer. And so I shall. I’ll report back the discoveries I make along the way.
