One of my biggest fears, I admit, is spending the working part
of my life in a 9 to 5 cubicle, a rote sort of drudgery that might grind the
joy in my soul to dust. Of course, this
is obscenely unfair, a phobia generated out of early television shows,
ignorance and my own well-nourished determination.
My father
led a large architectural firm and traveled for business and pleasure around
the world, my mother always by his side spreading peace and love in her own
gentle and unique way. Yet my experience of him in my formative years was going
to and from the train each day. Most
nights, he sat quietly at the table, not to be disturbed, in contemplation of
each peanut mixed with gin and tonic, too tired to say much to any of the rest
of us. Knowing no better for barely ever
seeing the inside of his office, I came to dread routine as much as the nights
he swept aside the placemat after dinner to pay the monthly bills.
Even at a
prestigious college (that he paid cash for me to attend) that trained us for
the successful commute into the city from well-to-do neighborhoods, I
contracted a disease of irrational dislike so intense I failed to understand
the forest of life for all the trees of monthly tickets. My one interview in a
New York City high rise office, finding plenty of cubicles full of friendly
people with real smiles and genuine hearts, ended nevertheless in polite
acknowledgement that such a life was better left to my classmates. They all embarked on their own commutes to
success while I remained rigidly in refusal to join the club.
Every attempt
to work for someone else has been short-lived. I have been continually nudged by circumstances and opportunities to choose my own entrepreneurial path instead of the security that my name on a
payroll with benefits might provide. Each chance to reconsider and take
the proffered hand has been met with resistance that makes us both know that I
am not truly interested.
Instead, I have
always harbored romantic dreams of inventing characters and writing fictional tales
around them that would inspire others and bring me happiness, meanwhile in
reality scrambling day in and day out to make ends meet between a hammer and
nails. My obstinate fear of the mundane
poisoned two marriages with the bottled up frustration and sits me down today
in contemplation from my basement apartment on the wrong side of the tracks.
Love and
fear, as always, are at the heart of the matter.
In his tired
face, I could not see the love and devotion my father practiced every day, the
variety, stimulation, challenges and successes he met with between the train
rides in and back out. I was afraid I
might end up with my own head in my hands after dinner and children tip-toeing
around me, another generation taught to be seen and afraid to laugh too loudly.
This morning
I lie awake at dawn, thinking of the many tasks screaming for attention, the
bills piled up, the pantry emptied out, the child home from college (on
scholarship and her own hard work) who will not come to visit, my family at a
wedding from which, because of my relentless drama, I was un-invited.
On the
bright side, those dreams of writing tales are coming true to life. Instead of invented, however, they are about
myself, laundry boldly placed online to describe the battle between love and
fear that we all face in different ways, the struggle to find happiness,
satisfaction and contentment even in the places once regarded as so
frightening. In my own story, I hope,
comes inspiration to others.
In fact, I
realize, this very leap daily from bed to sofa, pen scribbling dreamy thoughts
into words and computer networking before teeth are even brushed, is no less of
a commute than any seat on the stop-and-go train. No matter the chafe and bristle and the
search for other forests, we still look upon that single tree and compare
everything we do, for better or worse, to the mothers and fathers who brought
us into the world.
Worse than
my fear of being swallowed up by the ladder of larger and larger corporate
cubicles, I am afraid of my father's disapproval. In turn, ironically, his sadness and
frustration seems to stem from the observation that I am more disappointed and
ashamed of myself than from any judgment on his part.
Fear is a
powerful force that creates comfort in disguise. We embrace addictions like drugs, sex and compulsive
work, self-medicating to protect our hearts in obdurate and self-sabotaging
beliefs that in brief happiness we can find a lifetime of meaning. Thinking too hard, but not heartfully enough,
we can settle into patterns that ultimately create nothing of value at all.
My mother
and father worked together as an incredibly supportive couple, a love story
that lasted more than sixty years. They
provided each of us with a childhood of vibrancy and love enough to give us the
very best start in life. The very fear
that I might not do so well for me and mine gave that possibility breath, raised
and nurtured the chaos and delivered me to this cluttered apartment and place
of humble contemplation.
When the New
Age philosophers advertise that we create our own realities, I (as one human
being) am a perfect example. A life
lived in fear produces more fear. If we
live to avoid one vision, we might succeed in the avoidance, but we also fail
to live the alternative. We settle for
the mundane, the cubicle with no pictures thumb-tacked to the fabric.
I have been
blessed with glimpses and full showers of love.
I feel it more evident today and am receiving regular substantiation of
how much it has always been within my reach.
Learning to
live with heart, through intuition and faith, and less with fear so well
disguised, fortune begins to shine as brightly as the sun rises outside my
window. Awakening in joy, the beams of
gratitude shine forth, a reflection from within of all the love so lustrous
without and in spite of fear.
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