What do I really want with this one wild and precious life?
What do I really want with this one wild and precious life? Thanks to the exquisite poetry of Mary Oliver, this question has been at the heart of a hastily taken mini-sabbatical. Where I have landed in this inquiry is not at all where I expected.
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
From “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
When my kids were little and I was a single mum, I had a guiding principle for decision making in terms of how I spent my time. If I was with my kids, I just said no to invitations. If they were not with me, I said yes. The easiest decision matrix for someone with mild social anxiety and who was deeply adrift and disconnected at the time. My kids, then 3 and 7 needed me. They needed me present to their needs and present to support and coach them into life’s crazy subtleties. My decision making matrix was clear and my mantra for my life was pretty simple — ‘my time will come’. I will just wait till they are older.
And wait I did. I have lived a deeply satisfying life since the kids dad and I separated some 10 years ago. It has been a life filled with love and experiences of beauty and pain and joy, and yet it has been a compartmentalised life. Parenting with care and attention when my people were with me and off into the wilds of life when they were not.
Fast forward five years and I changed the waiting game and started the journey back home to me — to my wild and beautiful self. There I discovered and made some decisions about this one wild and precious life. I embraced the new mantra of ‘my life is my work is my life’ and I learned to live pretty seamlessly between work and play, showing up as authentically and truthfully as I could…and still I kept my life with my kids at arms length from the world. There were so many battles going on behind the scenes with schools and trying to access an ordinary life that I needed this separation.
Jump ahead another few years and I decided to finally risk my real truth. I wanted my one wild and precious life to be an intimately shared one. Once I finally admitted this to myself, I did met the love of my life.
With an intimate lover, friend and companion by my side in this parenting and life story, with a job I love and kids growing, I have more abundance and possibility than I ever imagined for myself. Of course, it has not all been gloss and I have had many challenges in this next life chapter. With the backdrop of a pandemic, merging a house with four kids and working full time, its been very tricky at times.
In recent months I have been increasingly restless. I have been feeling unappreciated and somewhat adrift again. Surely I have all I want — the love of my life by my side, my teenage kids are growing and one is making clear future plans. I am financially secure, I have a job I really love, a business with my mates that supports my practices, I have a great relationship with my kids dad and I have some beautiful friends in life…and yet discontent, stress and restlessness has shown up again and again.
I am busy.
I am tired.
I am full.
What started as a whisper from angels wings has become a fan fare squawking at me, “WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT WITH THIS ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE?”
Last week I took some time from many of the demands of my full life to create some space to explore this and some other questions. Am I still living my central life purpose to be in the practice of love? Are there some necessary endings (to quote Dr Henry Cloud) that I need to make to move from this somewhat contradictory stuck and restless place? What do I need to prune? What do I want to move toward? What am I not seeing? I acknowledge of course that these are questions I can ask from a place of privilege. These are not questions I could have possibly asked of myself ten years ago when I was just in survival mode.
What is this nexus I find myself in now? Am I just in another little liminal space waiting for my next butterfly emergence? I feel I have moved from my earlier mantra of ‘my time will come’ and feel that it truly has. Yet there has been some kind of blind spot here and I have finally worked it out. When it landed the restlessness and stuck-ness disappeared and I could feel ease returning to my heart centre.
What do I want to do with my one wild and precious life now? I want to parent and I want to parent well. I want to see my teenage children, grow and be ready to face the world with their courage and conviction in tact and a few good skills under their belt. I think for the first time since I became a parent nearly 17 years ago, I have finally arrived, just before they start leaving. I think I finally understand what my work is here.
I realise what I really want is to focus on the needs of my teenagers for a couple of years, like parenting when they were toddlers. It would appear that they need me available and present in different ways than when they were toddlers and with as much care. At this time of their need, I have found myself to be incredibly busy and full with endless creative and work pursuits. My temper is often frayed and I am usually too pushed for time to share my love and patience among all my loves, including the cat. What if these last couple of years before they leave home is the most important time of all? The literature talks about 0–4 as the most important, what about 14–18? The last chance I have to support and coach and love them through this time of massive transition from child to adolescent to young adult. I could miss this opportunity to love and hold space for them before they disappear out into the world.
I have come to realise on my mini break that it’s not more time for writing or crafting stories or writing my novel. It is not more time to pursue the research or work that I love. I want to pull back into the hearth of home and nurture and love and be available for my kids like when they were toddlers and hopefully with more wisdom, patience and love than I had 17 years ago. I want to be available and present when they need and not snap and rush in the business of a full life with little time for anyone, least of all me. I realise to be present in this life for my family, I need to stop being so full.
I bang on about my practice of love as my key purpose in life and honestly, if I can’t show up in the messy unglamorous places of parenting, with presence and practice, than my words of personal purpose mean nothing. If the time is now and it is time for living my practice of love, where is its biggest learning edge in this practice? Parenting. Time to put aside my ego and quest for personal glory and gratification. Time to take the often unrewarding and yet deeply rewarding parenting path that I have been simultaneously on and resisting treading all these years. Time to show up patiently available with love and care for my kids. Time to parent.
I am guessing now that I have this clarity that this will involve making some other necessary endings. Even if these are just for now. For the remainder of my mini-sabbatical I just need to work out where to focus my pruning and how to do that with the kindness and care myself and others deserve.
