Wake, Awake, For Night Is Flying

Something has shifted. Lately people keep approaching me with the same kind of question, wanting to talk about what their life actually means. We spent a long stretch stuck in place, going through motions, and that seems to be breaking open now. The ones who ask tend to be older. They have figured out, often the hard way, that handling life means working on yourself rather than trying to rearrange everyone around you.

A lot of people got comfortable. Life was running along fine, so they stopped paying attention, and then one day the arrangement quit working and they had no idea which direction to turn. Caught napping, you could say.

I want to be clear that I am no home wrecker. I talk only with people who come looking to talk. They already carry the questions; they just suspect I might have something useful to offer. What answers I have are mine, worked out for my own life, not prescriptions for theirs. If I can be of use, I will, and whatever I say comes with no obligation. Take it or leave it.

Life does mean something to me. I trust there is a reason behind what happens, even on the days I cannot see it. And I trust that every person has worth, that each one has some contribution nobody else can make. We would do well to notice that instead of pointing all our attention at the wealthy and the famous. Those people can do remarkable things, true, and plenty of them stay surprisingly down to earth about it.

The kind of waking up I am describing does not keep to a schedule. It might arrive in your teens or your twenties, or settle in during middle age, or come only near the very end. How much the world around you backs the search makes a difference. Usually it asks you to release your grip on things, on people, on values you once held tight. The result can be so complete that you barely recognize the person you used to be. Who was that thirty year old woman, new to town, meeting her husband on a blind date?

Changing is simply what it is to be human. The physical shifts are the easy ones to spot. You pull out an old photo and wonder whether you really looked like that in grade school, or you catch yourself guessing what ten more years will do to your face. Some people dread any of it and cling to whatever they absorbed back when. Nothing holds still, though, not even in the natural world. Birth and death keep turning over, for us and for every other living thing, and no amount of pretending makes that stop.

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