Writing this course is changing me and I didn’t expect that. We are approaching the summer solstice. I began writing at the beginning of the year thinking that I would just package what I know and have spent a life-time learning about the process of creating a life. Well! That should have been a clue right there! A lifetime learning? Creating a Life? I can’t think of how I could make this topic bigger or broader (I’m laughing with myself).
Packaging that content into a way that is manageable and not overwhelming makes me ask lots of questions. How can I write this so it is not overwhelming to a person? What categories do I select of a life that can give structure to the process of reflecting about one’s life and yet be meaningful and not living by rote. I have spent a life time looking at career and life planning. There are many ways to do it. If I sit down and make a list of all the categories – of what I do, think, act, have goals in, have dreams of; it again becomes too much.
So I selected 8 categories. Maybe they selected me J. Elizabeth Gilbert writes almost whimsically of how inspiration is a muse, and each idea looks for a person through whom to come. When I was 18, I got a scholarship to a small private liberal arts college in Florida. In my first semester, I took a philosophy course, and the professor asked us to imagine ourselves as 60 years of age, and write a paper about our life from that perspective. That course changed my thinking, and I never could go back home again. I had kicked myself out of the nest of my pentacostal family forever.
Now I am on the other side of 60 and writing a course about creating a treasure map of creating a life, looking at how to chart one’s life. I wish I could have taken such a course back as that 18-year old. I was too young then, with not enough life experience to get my arms around how big life is. I’m not sure even now that I can get my arms around this, because our lives are so very big, so very full. I constantly am being humbled by what I am doing. I’m wondering today if the muse chose the right person to do the job (wondering that is just part of the creative journey).
Creativity is like that though. I chose the topic, so I thought. I started writing, and as I write, it continues to morph. As I write, I understand from a larger perspective. As I write, I get added to. As I write, I find these epiphanies and say “Oh my God, of course!”
Yesterday’s epiphany was after I read some of Gilbert, wrote most of the day, watched the movie The Martian the night before, then to give myself some energy went for a walk with Mr. Max the Australian shepherd I’m housesitting.
I realized that I had slipped into living my life in the default mode after I was ill last fall. As I have been recovering, I haven’t fully stepped back into my own empowerment. It happens. Transitions and upsets do that to us. We forget that we are creating a life, and go into reaction mode.
Even though I wrote this inspired introductory segment about becoming the CEO of your life, I realized I hadn’t fully moved into that role yet since my illness. I still had been in the passenger seat this last year, and the ecourse, Create Your Life A Treasure Map to Wellbeing, is about moving over into the driver’s seat of the “Martian rover,” In the movie, Matt Damon plays a botanist astronaut who got injured and was left behind when his crew thought he was lost as they were making an emergency departure from Mars. How he creates his life with the resources he has been left with is a fun story. Does he give up and wait for death? He has no guarantee that he can live long enough (limited amount of food) till a new mission can come rescue him, especially since they don’t know he is still alive. He does have living quarters and tools, and some kind of moon rover vehicle which he can do some amazing things, but he constantly has to solve ongoing problems – such as how does he get enough juice to power the craft? How can he communicate back to space control on earth? How can he grow more food?
Life is like this. Problems to solve, treasures to find. Get in a creative process and metaphors and synchronicities come together to help develop new learnings and insights. How do I get out of default and back into my driver’s seat? Especially when circumstances would appear to say I can’t or its hopeless, or I’m too old, or I’m too young.
It’s never too late to move into the proactive mode of Creating Your Life. There are no circumstances that can prevent our being the creative director of our life. Even as we are dying, or ill, or grief stricken, we have ways of navigating our lives because we still get to make choices. Our personal choice is our most potent personal power.
It may simply be a shift in perspective. In Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic Creative Living Beyond Fear, she writes about the creative process. In one story, she tells of the lament of most writers – they do not have the luxury of peaceful serene time in beautiful surroundings to pull their writing through themselves onto the page. I remember stopping, closing the page, and realizing, that here I was, housesitting in an incredible house, surrounded by hay fields, and a view of Mt. Baker which is breath-taking. Yes, I have allergies. Yes, it’s a chore to pack to come and a chore to clean up to leave. But here I am in a writer’s dream setting. While I had already treasured the time, I had spent a lot of energy in my sense of challenge with my task instead of savoring the gift I had with deep appreciation for what I was receiving.
Being the creative director of our lives is such a gift. It opens our world to so many adventures. This life of ours, no matter how troubled, has so many treasures. It is our job, it is our delight, it is our journey to take the creative reins and Compose our Life (to quote Mary Catherine Bateson) to be the best that we can. No one else will do it for sure. Aren’t we lucky that we can? Aren’t we lucky that we have this huge banquet to choose from?
I’m finding that as I write, I am restoring my own soul, I am healing my body, I am healing an important relationship with a loved one, I am healing my own pain from the vulnerability of getting older and becoming ill, I am recharging myself, and getting excited again about being in the driver’s seat. I’m remembering a lost dream of being as race car driver, smiling, and enjoying that memory. I’m remembering that I matter. I’m remembering that you matter. I’m remembering to cherish my life, and want so, for you to cherish yours no matter what.