April 1: BONUS POST (Stop Complaining)

I got very sad today. Carey was up ahead with his airpods in, so for a couple of hours, I let my despair out. Sometimes, the exercise helps it reset.

For 3 years, I have prayed for discernment; a new direction; a way to be useful with what still feel like potentially useful skills, energy, intentions. The despair is made of the hundreds of rejections for both paid and volunteer opportunities: “Our roster for volunteers is full.” “We have decided to go a different route.”

I walked, heaving out ugly snot-sobs, like the child they threw a rock at for “looking funny”, “being weird”, who instantly saw that everyone in the playground was ok with that outcome, and immediately knew the desperate importance of being tolerated by the herd.

I am very lucky. I am still able to pay my electricity bill. I am consistently warm and dry. I am never hungry except through choice. That may all change, but, for now, it is true. I am grateful. There is nothing I can do about it anyway. Carey, for whom I am most grateful, loves me enough to say it straight: “They just don’t like you.” For him, this has the corollary “Who cares?”

I blame myself for my rejection. If I could just be enough NOT me, perhaps it would be different…

In full-on grief, I walked into the sign pictured. I turned the corner and bumped into Carey who was distressed to see my distress. The Universe wanted me to pull myself together.

For 3 years I have prayed for help to discern a purpose for what’s left of my life. Perhaps I should have been praying to extinguish the desire for purpose.

In her late 70s, my mum spoke about how the world moves on; how it ceases to be “yours” anymore; how you cease to have a say, because you won’t have to live with the consequences. I recognized this as wisdom. I had expected to dust it off in twenty years and be grateful that I recognized that moment in my own life. Perhaps it is already here.

I’m “only” 57. This trip started with Gareth, only a couple of years younger than me, triumphantly starting a new phase of life with a glorious wedding. Comparisons can be misleading. We are not all on the same trajectory.

Another of Carey’s favourite phrases is: “In a billion years the earth crashes into the sun”, from which he gains, not nihilism, (as I would/do), but the importance of a sense of perspective.

What would another 10 or 20 years of Karen-contribution actually change in the world? The answer is vanishingly small. It might even be net-negative, given my consumption, the people I would inevitably upset whilst trying.

Starting today, I will pray for detachment, and for acceptance: of failed pasts; of a small “future”; of a world that misses nothing, lacks nothing by my absence. That kind of inner humility is the most precious of all gifts.