Why isn’t there a cosmic flyswatter?
During Evening Poetry Retreat (which was lovely, btw, we read In Blackwater Woods), the prompt to journal/write about was, “Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this:”
In Mary Oliver's poem, it leads back to, “the fires and the black river of loss is salvation.”
She goes on to write about letting go, and how we must love things even as we must let them go when it's time to let them go. As I reflected on the prompt, I wrote down a lot of questions. Is it clear I spend a lot of time in existential angst? I spend a lot of time in existential angst.
Every question brought me ever closer to the ultimate question: who am I becoming? And why, for the love, do I have to be the one that goes first? Would life be more fair if karma were more immediate, like a cosmic fly swatter?
If David could write about a lack of justice in the Psalms, then it feels only fair that I get to write about it now.
In my pity party, I began to sit with the becoming question more. Who am I becoming? Who am I becoming? Who am I becoming?
My last day at my current job is October 30th, and while I'm quite excited to launch myself into the unknown and figure things out and try new things and wrestle a new business idea into existence, I also feel a deep sense of grief. Not about what is, but what could have been.
It could have been awesome. It could have been fun. It could have been fantastic, if only it wasn't like…well, it was. I find myself and my coworkers running through this came conversation, reckoning with a sense of loss, knowing it's the right thing, angry that it isn't different.
If this isn't a microcosm of the human experience, I don't know what is. And yet, a huge part of my becoming is to let go so that I can continue to become who I was made to be.
As Mary Oliver says,
To live in this world
You must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
And so, dear friend, every year, everything you have ever learned in your lifetime leads back to ___________.
