Why I Live Where I Do

Christmas, which thanks to friends was a Norman Rockwell scene this year, and a host of less important, although urgent things have come and gone since the last post. And in the hustle and bustle of this time of year, many thoughts crossed my mind to write about. However they escaped as I moved on to the next thing. But now on the verge of a new year and a new decade, I slow down again and am reminded of the need to make a conscious choice about what to keep or try to bring about in my life and what to turn loose of in the coming year.

One of the things to keep for sure is my spot in this place....the physical surroundings of my life. Place is important to me. It affects the way I think, how I feel and what I focus on. For me, place  contributes to or diminishs the bajiggityness of life. Although I'm not sure when I first realized this, I know it was long ago, and it was long after the realization that I actually moved to a place (home, town, location) more in keeping with what feeds my soul.  When places attract people who appreciate them, community can grow.

These thoughts flowed from a brief editorial in today's New York Times. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28mon4.html

Time to Quit - Again

I'm supposed to be in Chicago. I'm in Michigan. I'm supposed to be sitting in a professional development workshop at the university where I have been on the adjunct faculty for nearly a decade. I love these workshops. I get to interact with my peers, learn new teaching tips, meet new people and generally breathe in the academic air. So why am I not there?

I forgot.

The date was long marked in my calendar. I rsvp'd. I'd thought about how I would get over and back (train? drive?) And when I read an email early this morning from a colleague commenting about the day, I realized that my life was becoming bajiggity again, just when I thought I was beyond it.

Back in the days of my corporate employment, I would wake up in the middle of the night worried about projects that were due. A committed employee, you say? Yes, but the problem was, I wasn't worried about real projects. The project that woke me up were created by my anxious, bajiggity mind playing the trick of adding one more thing to my to do list. Then I would panic even more about the real ones I had on my plate. While some people seem to thrive on it, stress was definitely NOT my friend.

Since walking away from the corporate world for the last time in the early 1990's, I've chosen a life that was determinedly NOT bajiggity by my definition. To pay the bills I created a "mosaic" of jobs - tiny little gigs pieced together to provide just enough and sometimes not quite that. But I said I would bag groceries before I went back into the pressure cookers I'd left behind. Admittedly for some people the uncertainty of where the next bit of income would come from would be far worse than being in a job that drove you to distraction. Not me. We choose our poisons and choose where we draw our lines in the sand.

So I see in today's forgotten workshop a hint of the kind of behavior that was my everyday life all those years ago. And I know what to do. It's time to quit - again. Its time to refocus and, if necessary, recreate what holds meaning in my life and leave behind those things that don't anymore. While it's sad to think about leaving behind what made me "me" for this part of the journey, I know I can't get further without dropping some things and freeing my hands to discover and pick up what's next.

It occurs to me that this sounds like the opposite of the idea of "bloom where you are planted" but I can reconcile the two. It is about adapting to the world around you and the place where you are in your life rather than trying (in vain) to be someone that you aren't. And since you don't stop becoming who you are til you die, it's a process of discovery. Sometimes going deeper, sometimes wider. I think I'm heading for some deeper waters at the moment.

Two Prayers

All day I think about it, then at night I say it: Where did I come from and what am I supposed to be doing?
 I have no idea – my soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that and I intend to end up there.
 Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

Rumi

I just ran across the above verse from Rumi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalal_ad-Din_Muhammad_Rumi and like the tone from a crisply struck bell, it rang clear and true, resonating in my mind, ultimately trailing off into silence.

On the other side of the silence was the memory of a prayer by Thomas Merton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton that I had discovered during the years leading up to my father’s death. One of my father’s fondest wishes was that I would “come back” to “the” church. Perhaps my attraction to prayers (of all kinds and from all traditions) is a subconscious effort to respond to that wish. I believe God’s greatest test of humanity is whether we can see and sincerely accept the common threads among our differences and have that be enough.

Thomas Merton’s Prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please You. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

A meaningful choice

(The following was posted in very similar form in another blog of mine earlier this fall....)

When the agricultural revolution that began after WWII incorporated chemical fertilizers, industrialized agriculture and the use of all things corn in our food products, (the beginning of raising food that was not so labor intensive and thus "expensive") we started down the road to cheap food. Cheap by the world's standards - Americans spend less of their income on food than people in other countries. At the same time, we started down the road to cheap food of another definition - food that was less nutritious and as we've come to see, made with ingredients that have caused us to become a fat nation.

And while we were speeding up the growing, processing and shipping of food from all over the world to satisfy our hunger, we were losing connection to the seasons and the understanding of where food comes from. Starting about 40 years ago, large numbers of women (mostly women) walked out of the kitchen and into the workplace and they stopped cooking the way their mothers had. Individuals and families began relying on fast food or prepared food for many if not all meals. Yes, I know not everyone does this, but so many do...a common refrain among those who are trying to promote healthy eating is "nobody cooks!"

We tacitly assume that we don't need to plan meals. We decide what we want to eat on the way home. Rather than thinking through menus, working with leftovers and sometimes, eating what we have, rather than what we want, we assume the amazing choice of foods that we've come to expect will always be there. "Spontaneous shoppers" - those people who are driven by what they are hungry for or what's quick to fix - don't always eat well. Neither do those who can't afford fresh food and have to rely on fast food with lots of carbs, fat and sugar.

So here we are. A nation beginning (maybe?) to realize that we really don't have the control over the contents of our food that we used to. And although we do have control over at least part of our time, we've been trading eating well for other things. When I hear that someone doesn't have the time to cook, that's a signal to me that I may be in the gravitational pull of a bajiggity life. Everyone has all the time there is; what are the priorities that order the use of one's time? That's the question!

I wonder: what would happen if one day each month everyone in the country sat down to a home cooked dinner, made with fresh ingredients (dare I say locally grown/produced?) that was planned in advance and eaten with family and friends? It seems like one small step toward reclaiming a real, meaningful choice about how we live.

Perceptions of Success

I admire Elinor Ostrom for three reasons.

First, because the recent winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for economics (shared with Oliver E. Williamson) found something that interested her intensely and made it her life’s work. “Here” seems to have been enough; no constant scramble to get to the next topic, the next job, the next career. No need to constantly get to a new “there”.

Second, I admire Professor Ostrom because her research seems to be so hopeful; about distributing power more equitably and relying on the wisdom of those close to an issue of shared concern to make the right decision, assuming access to good information.

Third, Professor Ostrom’s work, while undoubtedly known to her peers, was invisible to the wider world until now. I admire her for having it be it’s own reward, for being driven by internal motivation and curiosity rather than desire for external recognition. Being driven by a need to be recognized would have required a great deal of patience.

This is a woman who seems to have lived the opposite of a bajiggity life. Admittedly life looks different in the rear view mirror than when we are living it. I don’t know the details of the Professor’s, but on the surface compared to multiple careers, multiple employers and multiple locations, the choice and ability to “bloom where you are planted” and make your interests the center of your work over a long period gives me a sense she is grounded and solid. Not inflexible or a Luddite, but the kind of person whose sureness encourages trust and whose ongoing curiosity engages conversation.

Bajiggity?

I guess it's important to explain a bit about the blog's name and reason for being. So here goes.

I'm a dreamer and someone whose life - from the perspective of the viewer who isn't me - has looked pretty satisfactory over all. I've enjoyed a good education, good, progressively responsible jobs, owned my own home, not been overwhelmed by debt, traveled some and pretty much been able to do what I wanted to. Yet, I've never been satisfied.

I've always looked for the perfect in myself and the situations in which I found myself. Not to mention in others. And one day I realized that always looking for the perfect made me miss out on enjoying the good. My never satisfied; next idea/relationship, please; happy = future; gotta have it the way I dreamed it way of life left me, well, bajiggity. Kind of antsy and anxious to be done with now to move on to tomorrow which undoubtedly would be better, happier, and more in keeping with my dreams. I remember as a child my mother telling me not to wish my life away. Well, that lesson took a long time to sink in.

So while I can't be anyone other than who I am - someone interested in all kinds of things and always seeing possibilities - I'm trying really hard to focus on the moment and what it offers. And take a deep dive into the few things that have stayed priorities with me over the years. Things like enjoying a conversation with friends, a shared meal, a sunset, a good book or just the fact that I'm here to think about all those things. And one more thing that stayed with me despite the years I spent full tilt running from it: my midwest roots. With all that freedom I could have lived anywhere, but never left the mid-est of the midwest - Indiana, Illinois and now, Michigan.

So the best I can explain it is that this blog is about the joy of being who I am, being where I belong and doing things that make me happy. And walking away from a bajiggity life.