Like many people, I enjoy a good mystery. You are presented with a situation, you search for clues, follow a few false leads, lose the trail, then pick it up again. There are plot twists and numerous unexpected events and setbacks, and occasionally dramatic and startling developments. And sometimes you come to the end of it and are left with a very unsatisfying conclusion while at other times you solve the mystery, tying up all the loose ends in a neat little package. Oh if only real life worked out like that. I reckon sometimes it does, but usually not, at least not for me.
My life has at times felt like a mystery–at least the plot twists, unexpected events, and startling developments. At times it’s been hard to tell who the “bad guys” are, and the “good guys” aren’t at all who I expected them to be. And on really rare occasions the bad guy and the good guy are the same person, which just goes to prove that everything is relative, particularly with a mystery. That said, the more that the mystery that is my life unfolds, the more interesting it’s becoming. I can look back at earlier “chapters” and recognize that all the clues were right in front of me, practically jumping up and down, and I still failed to connect the dots, getting really close to resolving a particular issue only to turn away from the resolution just steps away. In spite of all of that, it’s been a real page-turner so far.
Yesterday morning I started “Book 11” in my journal writing escapades that I titled, “Writing My Way to Clarity.” I’ve written hundreds (and hundreds) of pages every day since I first started my daily journal back on February 5, 2012. I’d started journaling off and on before that date, but on February 5, I hit full stride and have written every day since then. (Interestingly I took up daily journal writing right around the same time I took a brief hiatus from writing this blog on a daily basis.) My original purpose in writing in my journal was to clarify some things for myself, particularly the direction I wanted my career and my life to take during the period of my life that I often refer to as “the series of unfortunate events” that befell me early in 2011 and continued through the middle of 2012. Writing has always provided an outlet for me in helping work through challenges, outline approaches, question and examine my processes, motives, and rationales for whatever I was doing or considering at any given time.
So one might think that after hundreds (and hundreds) of pages of “writing my way to clarity” some things would be really clear by now, but not so. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few years it’s that not knowing is still okay. It’s okay not to know everything right now, in fact most days it feels like I don’t know much of anything in terms of my purpose on the planet, why I’m doing what I’m doing, and what I’m “supposed to” be doing next. It’s that balance between living in the moment and yet also having a plan for the future. Sometimes I strike it just right. So back to the mystery: just when I think I have a little clarity on one possibility, another possibility pops up. It’s like receiving an answer to a question I didn’t even realize I’d asked. So I reach a conclusion and take a step in the direction that conclusion points to then I get a nudge that says, “Not so fast, look over here.” Things that make you go, hmmmm indeed.
So if all this seems rather cryptic and perplexing and you’re wondering what any of this has to do with being grateful, I’ll explain it to you like this: sometimes we just don’t know what’s going to happen til we read the next chapter. I think I have something figured out–and I perhaps do–but new information comes in that causes me to test my assumptions, that challenges what I think I know. I have learned in my wiser elderhood not to get as rattled by this process as I used to. I no longer run around waving my hands and saying, “Oh no! Just when I thought I knew what I was doing, I suddenly don’t know again…” (Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not the run around waving my hands kind of person, but you get the general idea.)
So tonight I am grateful for the clarity I am receiving–it isn’t all cloudy and uncertain, and grateful for the patience I am developing to wait on the pieces that are not yet clearly in focus. It really is all about having the faith–both in myself as well as the powers-that-be (God, the Universe, etc.)–that everything is going to come ’round right in the end. So I will continue writing my way to clarity each day, and writing my lessons in gratitude each night, as the spirit moves me, and be grateful for it all. I continue to return to the wonderful quote by Rilke that speaks to this:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
So I am trying to love the questions as best I can until the day I begin to live into the answers, and am grateful for the mystery as it unfolds.
