Life presents many choices and options. The path you take is often dependent on who’s driving the car. Or who’s reading the map. Or where you want to go. Or where you think you’re headed. Do you even have a destination or are you out for a Sunday drive? Are you running late and not where you need to be or thought you’d be? And once you miss your exit, getting back onto the right road can be impossible or feel impossible. Accidentally taking the I-95 exit instead of the Turnpike exit at the Golden Glades interchange means that you’re screwed unless you know how to navigate the North Miami Beach neighborhoods. Just get off at Ives Dairy road and go west toward the stadium. You must have a back up plan. You have to make contingencies. And you have to anticipate or consider that some state sanctioned road repaving project is going to pop up and narrow northbound lanes from four to one.
Friday I felt like a giant sink hole had opened up right under me and swallowed everything whole. My plans, my dreams, my destination all vanished.
Then someone asked, “How could you let this happen?”
Think about that. I LET an underground avalanche vacuum away my hopes and it is somehow MY FAULT because I didn’t make contingency plans for a natural disaster? Or because I set out on the wild hair of a plan to BUILD MY DREAM and seize the life I want for myself?I fail because I actually want something else. And I deserve to fail because I set off on this wild hair, right?
Lesson #1: Don’t ask for directions from the people who think the sink hole is your own damn fault.
Lesson #2: Forget the sink hole. Fuck the sink hole! Don’t waste the time, energy or resources. My goal is not to take on a restoration project, especially someone else disaster zone. My goal is MY HOUSE and MY LIFE.
Lesson #3: There are lots of ways to get where I am trying to go. I am GREAT with directions. I am not afraid of getting off the main thoroughfares. I can navigate a large city. I can navigate my life. I’ll take an unpaved, limerock road that rattles my teeth like I am driving on a washboard for a 1,000 miles if that is the ONLY way to get where I want to be. Calling me crazy or absurd or selfish will fall on deaf ears. I’m not crazy. I am not ridiculous.
I have a vision. Being visionary is often counter intuitive for the general population. Vision is often assigned a marginal value. Just like having a vocation. Why do you want to be a doctor? Why would anyone want to be a priest? Or a cop? Or a soldier in a volunteer army? Vocation. You feel COMPELLED to act or do or BE. I have the nature to have and follow my VOCATION. I also have a calling to my art. I want to write. I also have a vision of the life I wish to build for myself. And that life revolves around a HOME. And even with the devastating sink hole I encountered Friday…..I will build that home. I feel like Noah. While I may look mad, truly insane, I follow a different Instructor. I know what I am meant to do with my life. And if you love me….truly love ME, you don’t stand around me and offer support in the form of, “Why can’t you just be content with THIS? Why do you always have to do ALL this other stuff?”
If you love me…..you pick up a hammer or bring me a glass of water or find a new route on your iPhone app.