What do you want to do?

I keep thinking about what someone recently said, about the biological motivations of creatures in comfort and creatures in discomfort: creatures in discomfort seek infamy and I immortality, creatures in comfort reproduce.  I no longer seek immortality or infamy; it is time for me to find a comfortable spot to settle in.  It is time for me to finally answer the question of what it is I want to do with my one wild and precious life. 

Who do I want to be?

Pressing up against that question is uncomfortable.  It makes me want to run and fill my mind with nothings.  I don’t want to work very hard…I want to live simply and happily.  That has always been my answer, and I thought I was moving towards it, but now I am not so sure.    

If I have to chose, career or family, which do I want?  All of this must be decided, of course, within the new context that nothing in sure, nothing is secure.  There are no guarantees in life, and I have seen that every step.  Marriages end, loved ones die, friends fade away or stop speaking.  Nothing in life is certain but it’s own ending, and even that is bathed in rich uncertainty. 

I used to say I wanted to be the chair of the Federal Reserve, but now I know that was never true.  I never really truly wanted infamy, I don’t think.  I just saw it as a short cut to love I didn’t trust myself to find on my own, be worthy of on my own.  So I sought stages, platforms, used my mouth as a bullhorn.  All in the pursuit of the love I didn’t feel worthy of. 

But that’s changing, and I do believe I am capable and worthy of a great, safe love.  I dearly, truly, whole-heartedly hope it is right in front of me, and that all I have to do is move forward into it.  And so again I dive in head first, head finally cleared of the concussion I earned from my last dive.  Fingers crossed, I make the next series of life-changing, future altering choices that push and pull and tear at the fragile fabric of normalcy, reminding me that it is only a thin veneer covering the chaos and turbulence of real life, of living actively and with awareness. 

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I want to live it with only a little fear, I want to push at the seams and the boundaries and find territories others were not willing to visit.  But I want to find them within myself.  There is no great exploration to be had outside of me.  The world is replete with the footprints of the explorers who’ve already come through.  What wilderness is left exists within my own mind, within whatever makes up a soul.  That is where my infamy can live.