Resignation

01 24, 2021

Sometimes when I look up from the sink after washing my face and see her in the mirror, see how much older she is than I am, I think it’s time to move on from this interminable quest for work, a quest that has become so familiar it feels like home.  Work has always felt empty.  But who I really AM, what matters, that’s not empty.

But there’s something about resignation, there’s no relief in it.  It doesn’t bring Peace.

Can I ask myself to experience peace even though nothing may ever change.  When I think I’ve experienced peace in the domain of ‘work’, I wonder if it’s actually resignation, submission to the crushing weight of Reality saying, “Admit and accept that you will never know the beauty of standing in your own radiance feeling the joy of ‘Ahh, this. This is what I’m here for.’

Over the course of the past week’s inquiry, lots of memories have come up, swirled around … only the occasional shimmer or a shard of insight.

The one about moving to very rural Texas just as I turned 12.   The high school I would go to was smaller than my elementary school in Dallas. It might as well have been Mars.  My friends in Dallas were continuing their violin lessons, foreign language classes, learning about the world.  I can see now the meaning I made of that, and glimpses of that conclusion still repeat.  ‘I will never be the person I thought I could be.’  But it wasn’t resignation then, it was fury, resentment, rebellion and contempt.  Burn the house down.

The memory about showing horses, Fashion Design school, a year abroad to study language in college that wasn’t….  memories about times I tried to step out into a world of mastering a skill…but…something would happen, and nothing would happen.

Face it.

But I don’t like looking into the past for answers.  What’s the secret of happiness?… stop being unhappy.

Where is my bridge of Peace into ‘My Wildly Profound Work in the World’?  I experience Peace and trust it, until I turn my attention to the domain of work.  I try to close my eyes and imagine a world in which I make a congruent and authentic contribution, feeling whole where once I felt divided, recognizing the joy of meaningful work. 

Truth:  I do not have a vision of that world. 

Truth:  I long for wholeheartedness.

Truth:  I’m afraid that this is all there is.