Let's Be Reasonable - 12-21-08

All right, let’s look at this levelly, cleared for the moment of preconceived notions and crystallized expectations. I need to clarify once again what I truly want, separate from all I want, because the two sometimes diverge. I want the world. I want a lot, but what I truly want, what is essential, is much narrower.

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I’ve been feeling weighed down, each day’s troubles and thoughts laying heavy on my shoulders, but in its own way, the passing alone of each day being the most draining thing to carry. On some deep level, I signified the loss of each day as some failure on my part, representative of some inability of mine to get my head on straight and laser my focus on my future. Something must be wrong with me, to be still alone, the hard chill of winter being so much more significant than the predictable climate change of another season. Why wasn’t it happening yet? I kept asking myself. What was I doing wrong and how could I fix it? Because surely the universe did not mean to make me wait even longer for love. I had to be the deciding factor in extending this bottomless, endless deadline.

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And involved in all that angst was no just meeting my mate, but a slow clenching of my fists and fingers over the “how” and “when” of this eagerly awaited event. Steadily, my simple vision of meeting my love rose like yeast bread in the warm, moist air of my imagination into far more details and strictures than I began this vision with. I wanted it to happen this way, I wanted it to happen at this certain time, I didn’t want it to come by this particular channel. All these little preferences clouding the issue and bowing my back under their collective weight until I could only see the ground beneath my feet and not the glorious future before me. No wonder I had lost all hope and vision.

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So now I have the reluctant task of differentiating between what I want and all I want, between what I must have and what I would like to have, like separating the wheat from the chaff. And it’s taken me all these weeks to come to that difficult realization because I wanted to believe part of the visualization process could be determining a little more of the “how” and “when” than maybe really is part of it. Maybe I need to rein in – just a little bit – my hunger, my passion, my all-or-nothing instinct to remember what’s really important.

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I want a husband. I want children. I want to be able to stay home with my children. And even taking each part and melding it to make it as rich, detailed, vividly visualized a whole as it possibly can be, I am still forced to admit that those are really the only essentials.

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If you dared to ask me what I would like, I would spill them out one after the other with the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun. I would like to be in love for Christmas. I would like for last winter to be the last winter I spend alone. I would like an August or September ’09 wedding. I would like to live in Chesapeake. I would like to be able to quit my job after this year to stay home. I would like to meet my husband in a natural, organic setting and fashion. I would like never to hear from or about another dating service again. I would like a romantic story. I would like to know instantly after meeting my future husband that he’s someone special. I would like to meet someone who is financially secure enough to support a family immediately. Lord, I could keep going with all the things I would like. But that’s not the point of this exercise. The purpose here is to remember foremost what it is that I truly want, the cornerstones for all the castles my imagination has been building with reckless abandon as the Secret taught me. And I do believe you need to be reckless with your visions, that you need to throw your arms wide to scatter all those details like seeds, let them fall where they may with trust that they’ll bear fruit. But maybe you have to be reckless without going blind to the basic desire. The trick is how to swing away with all that heart and passion without losing your feet in the glorious freedom of it.

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It’s Just Lunch called again, making it two attempts after the date with Alan. I kept clinging to a belief that it mattered that I didn’t want a dating service to be the how, that it made a difference to the grand plan. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe that was a “would like,” a perk, a secondary or even tertiary hope. But not part of the essential, the “that it happened,” not “how it happened.” Maybe the only thing I can really do is feel that hope as sharply as I can, throw it out there with all my might, and keep walking along the dating service path. If I got my wildly wheeling eyes back to the basics, I would say again, with conviction, I don’t care how it happens, I will bless any means by which my mate, my match, my love finds me. Do I want to take on It’s Just Lunch again? No. Most definitely not. But I didn’t want to return to Newsome Park day after day this year, either. But I do. Do I get to wake up each day eager for what it may bring me? No. But I wake up anyway. Did I curl into a ball when the last flicker of hope for another job flickered out? No, I did not. Do I fling my young, unsuspecting students away from me, even when they have tried the last of my patience? No, I compose my face and speak gently to them.

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I suppose that’s all just the less lovely side of maturity, of that real life I ached for and desperately hoped I could achieve. That’s being accountable for my choices and not being a victim. That’s facing yet another day the cold that presses on me without complaint, accepting that there is no shelter. That is the golden apple of faith, of belief in the unseen, that I must battle my way to grasp. It’s accepting that just because it’s not easy doesn’t necessarily mean it is not vital. This is my life. I have to live it, and I have to remember how to live it with grace. And somehow, I must keep my eyes focused on the prize.