Where is Your Life Taking You?
Where is your life taking you?
That’s the question I heard Parker Palmer asking. The Quaker wise man was being interviewed. “I had to ask myself,” he said, “where my life was taking me, rather than just where I was trying to take my life.”
It’s important to try to take your life somewhere. Without some sense of drive or purpose or “fire in the belly” we mostly grow mold. I don’t think Palmer was speaking to people who’ve never pushed like hell to make something happen, never felt that fire. His question was meant only for people like himself—people who have already pushed and driven and seized the day, every day. Because inevitably, the place we are trying to take our life doesn’t appear. We don’t quite get there.
That turns out to be a left-handed blessing. We’re ready to hear this other question, “Where is my life trying to take me?” If you asked that question before you worked and sweated and pushed; if you asked that question before you sank into a chair depressed, half-broken, disillusioned, you would be a silly naïf. The way life works, you have to end up in that chair before this latter question poses itself.
Then you can begin to see things differently. Maybe I was pushing myself to be something or someone that I’m really not. Maybe I was trying to take my life where I had been taught to take it—to the place of “success” or “prominence” that my mother and father and everybody else in town seemed to value.
Many people report—later in life—that they were pushed to choose a career in a field that made more sense or made more money, rather than the field of their dreams. That’s not always bad advice, because not everyone can make a living doing what they love. But it’s worth remembering that early inclination when you’re sitting in that chair. Maybe now is a good time to stop pushing my life somewhere and allow it to pull me where it needs to go.
Don’t we wish that it was easy to let your life just “pull you” where it needs to go!
It isn’t. It takes work, just of another kind. Now it’s the labor of patience, the effort of letting go, the willingness to do our best without caring how “good” it is, or how efficient or successful it is. Let me tell you, I am not there yet. But I want to be, and I think—I hope—that counts for a lot.
A great reminder-Thanks David
You would know. You would know.
I like the way this fits in with the compass blog last week. I am finding myself trying to unwind a life I thought I was supposed to live – and in retrospect I had no clue what I was chasing. The unwinding takes longer that I thought but as you said – I hope the desire counts for a lot (and if I mix it in w/some action I’m pretty sure it will).
How unaware I’ve been most of my life! Realization that the “willingness to do my best without caring how good it is”..Excellent advice and direction to head. thank you!
I wish my now dead son could have read this article, David. It might have made all the difference about living his life to him. This speaks to each of us if we will only listen carefully and honestly. Thank you for writing.
I am sorry to hear of this enormous loss in your life. No words . . . .
Thanks David; it all seems so obvious when presented as you have; too bad it isn’t obvious along the way. Much to still be learned and much time in the chair still needed. Best
“much time in the chair still needed”–love that!
Well, that’s encouraging. I’m in the chair.
Much to ponder here! I, too, am still in the chair!
I love the idea of taking my life where it leads me. It is a very relaxing thought. Thanks David. Gloria Hayes