Purpose

June 06, 2008

The approach of my fortieth birthday has provoked a great deal of thought in me about the direction my life has gone, is going, will go. The idea of purpose keeps popping up everywhere I look, like a porpoise (pun definitely intended and a tribute to my husband's love of them), enticing me to play in deeper waters.

Our treadmill sits in our basement living room, next to a bookshelf full of mostly paperback books. After a workout the other day, as I was getting ready to get off the treadmill, a book on the bottom shelf caught my eye, Real Magic by Wayne Dyer. I pulled it out, I started reading it. Not a few pages into the book, I encounter a discussion about one's life purpose and how it shapes one's destiny.

My best friend Jill is reading a book about purpose, too, Martha Beck's latest, Steering by Starlight. Now, I love Martha Beck because she has a way of cutting through bullshit and getting my own mind to start telling me like it is. Her wisdom is simple, no-nonsense, realistic. Other books of hers have really helped me, and I'm hoping to read this new one, soon.

Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to be involved in a virtual book tour for Eric Maisel's Van Gogh Blues, which included a great deal of discussion about how to make meaning in life. Meaning and purpose are definitely connected, perhaps the very same thing.

I look back on my life so far and see a lot of meandering, wandering even. I chalk it up to being part gypsy. Wayne Dyer claims that everything eventually lines up on a certain path we can usually only see in retrospect, our choices stacking up one-by-one to build our current reality. Or perhaps, the experiences we choose line up like stepping stones through a thicket, leading us to the garden we're cultivating now.

Purpose, though, seems to have eluded me so far. My husband, by contrast, knew early in his life that he wanted to be a computer programmer. He chose that path, followed it, made it happen. He makes his living building software, and he loves every blessed minute of it. My little brother also pursued a career in computers and loves it, as well. I have dabbled in many ideas of what to do with my life.

In high school, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I loved clothes, and I loved colors, and I wanted to wear things that I designed. I even altered some existing clothing to look what I thought was fabulous. For example, I put elastic in the hem of a blue dress so that it hugged my knees. I thought it was awesome. Not sure what other people thought.

Problem is, I can't draw. Just cannot do it well enough for a career in fashion design. If I were facing this decision now, with all I've learned over the past 25 years, I'd teach myself to freakin' draw. But back then, I let it keep me from doing what I thought I wanted to do.

I also wanted to be an actress in high school, and I think I could've been better than passable. I was in one play, and I so absolutely loved it, but there were barriers, at least in my own mind, to that path as well, and I changed my mind again. I decided that if I couldn't be a fashion designer, I might be a fashion buyer, and I took a fashion merchandising class at Tyler Junior College that I loved. I also made such good grades that I ruined the curve, much to the chagrin of my fellow students.

But something kept me from choosing to go down that path further. I went to Houston to be a nanny for two years. Then to Minnesota. I don't recall what I wanted to do during those years--other than meet Richard Grieco, but that's another embarrassing story we'll save for another post--but not long after I started working for the local county government, I read Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones. My desire to write, to make writing my life's work, sprouted.

And grew. Quickly, exponentially.

That desire has remained what Martha Beck would probably call my North Star through the years since, yet I have not made writing my profession. I have written a lot of poetry, some of it very good. I have not submitted any of it for publication. I have written a few short stories, some of them pretty good. I haven't submitted any of those for publication either. I have started several novels, many other stories, and I have made a few stabbing attempts at memoirs which have (so far) failed miserably. I have written volume upon volume upon volume of personal journals. I have written so many letters I couldn't possibly quantify them.

Writing is a vital part of my life, and it always has been. When I was a tiny tot, before going to school, I watched my mom write letters, fascinated. I remember being very frustrated that I could not make any words out of squiggles of ink on the paper that, in my toddler mind, looked like Mom's. I wrote squiggles, asked Mom, "What does this say?" She gently told me it didn't say anything.

Curses!

The alphabet, words, reading, writing came easy to me throughout my career as a student. I excelled at all things language, while my success with math in school exacted a higher effort on my part and the part of my poor high school algebra teacher, the patient, sweet, saintly Mrs. Page. Because of her, I made A's; without her, no doubt I would've failed.

Words have always been my strength, and I don't feel comfortable in my life when I'm not writing something. There've been times when I have been limited in my ability to write because of physical limitations. For me, it is like being without mental oxygen, like being a beached whale, a dolphin without fins.

So, is writing my purpose?

Indeed, at least in part, but I also discovered this other creative pursuit, this hobby, called scrapbooking, which involves writing, but it also involves colors, textures, design, all those things that intrigued and attracted me to fashion so many years ago. When I think about my purpose, what sounds a bell with resounding clarity it creativity. I'm a deeply creative person, and I believe that creativity heals, rejuvenates, makes us human beings better, heartier, healthier, happier.

My purpose, in some as yet undetermined fashion, is to promote, teach, encourage, inspire creativity.

I'm practicing creativity myself on a daily basis. Living can be creative if you're paying attention and not just plodding along. Life is to be experienced openly. I try to open myself to new discoveries, new learning, every day. I've become, as forty approaches, aware of how fleeting life can be. Already, age and its resulting gravity have begun to sink into my consciousness. I don't have the time I used to think I had to decide. Living is for now.

I know that living creatively, continuing to play with color and design in the form of adhering pictures to cardstock and telling the accompanying story, continuing to write every chance I get and hone my craft, these are the daily work of finding my purpose and manifesting it in my life. The Universe is grand and open and full of opportunities. I know I am on the right path, and I can hardly wait to see just where it takes me.

Another Celebration

Not only am I on the brink of celebrating my birthday, today is the 18th anniversary of my friendship with Jill. Through so many years, so many joys and sorrows, so much of living, you have been an anchor and delightful companion. I love you, Jill. How lucky I am to have you as my best friend, my true sister. Happy Friendship Anniversary!