…you come across something – art, a sign, a piece of writing, a book – and you think, wow. Wow. That was exactly what I needed, coming into my life exactly when I needed it.
Twice, lately, this has happened to me.
First, with a book (more on that in another post, promise). Then, with an old essay (close to 15 years old) by Elizabeth Gilbert. I have never read Eat, Pray, Love. I never understood the appeal. (But please, if I SHOULD read it, please make your case in the comments! I’ll consider it, I promise!)
This is from an essay that Gilbert wrote for O Magazine back in 2010. I probably read it in 2010. To say that it didn’t stick is an understatement. I have no idea how I came across it this morning, but it is exactly what I needed to read at exactly this moment in time. The icing on the cake, if you will, of many messages that I’ve gotten from the Universe recently, from books (Atomic Habits, The Power of Regret, Four Thousand Weeks…), and other sources (my therapist, ha). Here’s one paragraph that stood out, although the entire essay is worth reading…
When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days—with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents—I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through. But maybe there’s a good historical reason for all this overwhelming confusion. We don’t have centuries of educated, autonomous female role models to imitate here (there were no women quite like us until very recently), so nobody has given us a map. As a result, we each race forth blindly into this new maze of limitless options. And the risks are steep. We make mistakes. We take sharp turns, hoping to stumble on an open path, only to bump into dead-end walls and have to back up and start all over again. We push mysterious levers, hoping to earn a reward, only to learn—whoops, that was a suffering button!…
She continues, then ends the essay with this:
Let’s just anticipate that we (all of us) will disappoint ourselves somehow in the decade to come. Go ahead and let it happen. Let somebody else be a better mother than you for one afternoon. Let somebody else go to art school. Let somebody else have a happy marriage, while you foolishly pick the wrong guy. (Hell, I’ve done it; it’s survivable.) While you’re at it, take the wrong job. Move to the wrong city. Lose your temper in front of the boss, quit training for that marathon, wolf down a truckload of cupcakes the day after you start your diet. Blow it all catastrophically, in fact, and then start over with good cheer. This is what we all must learn to do, for this is how maps get charted—by taking wrong turns that lead to surprising passageways that open into spectacularly unexpected new worlds. So just march on. Future generations will thank you—trust me—for showing the way, for beating brave new footpaths out of wonky old mistakes.
Fall flat on your face if you must, but please, for the sake of us all, do not stop.
Map your own life.
I needed this right now. I needed the reminder that it’s up to me. I don’t have to follow the prescribed path. Of course, I’ve known this for a long time. But you know how when you get bogged down, you can lose sight of what’s true? That’s where I have been. These are all half-formed, partially-caffeinated thoughts. I had a completely different post planned for this morning, in which I was going to ask all of you if you had any thoughts on whether it might work to go super-short with hair that tends toward frizzy-wavy. And instead, I find myself here, ruminating on a 14-year-old essay. I guess that means that the hair decision is up to me, like everything else in my life. 🙂 I’ll be spending some time reflecting on this and what it means while I’m having that haircut later today, for sure.
Have you been (figuratively) hit by something recently? Something you needed to see, hear, read, or remember? I’d love to know…
Be well, my friends. Happy Tuesday.