Heart Work

I’ve been at our place in Italy for the last week under the pretense of bringing over some of our stuff. That had to be done, yes, but the real goal of the trip for me was getting the space to do some heart work. I hate that I need that space, but I do. I’ve never really sought out being alone (it’s scary!) but sometimes it’s called for.

I did a huge amount of thinking this week, about our move, about myself, my marriage, my kids, my family and my dear, dear friends struggling in their own unique ways. Unfortunately nothing is any more clear to me than it was before all the thinking. In fact…ugh, when will I learn?! No amount of thinking can sort out the feeling. You just have to feel. Because logic doesn’t have a home in the heart.

In the last few months I have had a number of people ask me, sometimes a bit shyly, if they could talk with me about our move because they have that spark inside them that is burning for change or adventure or just to break free. I love to talk with people in this state because there is a vulnerability and realness there and I want to foster and support as much of that in the world as I possibly can. Unfortunately, I have zero answers. I wish I did, but I know nothing about anything. I want you to dream your big dreams, take your big risks, be brave and tell me about it and I will try to do the same. The only reason I am on this journey is because I can’t NOT be.

That got me thinking about the Anaïs Nin quote that many of us know: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Until today I had never read what comes after that.

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live. Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat. Perfection is static, and I am in full progress. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.”

Let us pause there. I am in full progress. Yes, indeed, I am.

I am stumbling, hopefully not just from defeat to defeat, but I have a sneaking suspicion that defeat is an ugly side effect of growing. I feel my taste for normal pleasures dwindling. For better or worse I want, no, insist upon, a life less ordinary than the one I have lived so far. I want to be pushed, maybe not every day, but most, to become who I am next meant to be. I have no idea what that looks like. All I know is that I want to do it, whatever it is, with integrity, compassion and a humble spirit. These things are harder than they should be.

I feel like such a baby here in this foreign land I am soon to call home. Doing most things is a challenge. I don’t know how to accomplish the most mundane of tasks. That’s what makes it adventure. But the inner adventure is the really, truly, fuck-you-in-the-head one. When you’re trying to make peace between who and how and what you love, that is when the stakes are actually high. All these questions and not an answer in sight. That’s the point of it all, I guess. Leaning into the not knowing.

Tonight, embracing my more dramatic side, I feel like one of those Sacred Heart illustrations where the flaming heart is shining, burning, and wrapped in thorns. Full but tortured, inspired but bleeding. Those Catholics know a thing or two about imagery, I’ll give them that.