Full Circle

I love when things come full circle.  It seems to be a passion of mine - to find, to recognize the full circles in life.  It is hard in our society these days with the loss of traditions and advent of commercial farming.  Once upon a time you could tell the month by the food on your plate.  No more.  For many of us, even the sun comes and goes without our knowing.  Twenty years ago I taught myself to make my bed every morning – not because I was a neat freak, by any stretch, but because it was a way of recognizing, ever so subtly the beginning of a new day. 

But everything around us comes full circle - days, seasons, years, our lives, even societies and nations.  There is a birth, a crest, a death to everything.  The more we find this rhythm in little ways in our lives, the more I believe we find our place within the movement.  And in our place, I believe, we find peace. 

It gets harder and harder to do this.  The sun can rise and set without our ever knowing in our electrically lighted homes and windowless offices or factories.  Winters come and go

 with a sharp but brief slap across our bodies as we bolt to our heated cars outside our heated homes that deliver us to our heated offices.  Holidays holler “SHOPPING!” more loudly than they do the meanings behind them, and true traditions are lost in the hustle bustle of everyday life. 

Perhaps it is one of the things I loved about traveling, though I may not have known it at the time.   You develop your own sort of dance to get to know a new town or country.  For me, my first day I loved to wander.  I often didn’t even look at books or guides, I just got off the train or bus, found a place to leave my things, and set out to the streets.  It was in the back streets I would find a feeling for everyday life in this new place - the people, the language, the smells and food, tastes and customs.  Sometime in the evening I’d stop for food or coffee and pull out a guidebook or my wireless, perusing the tourist information to find the things I knew I wanted to see before I left.  I would read about the place, its history and people, trying to merge what I had seen in the day with what I read.  I tried to find the little ways to merge myself with the people, eating their food, learning words in their languages or even their alphabets.  One of my greatest traveling moments was the first day a Cyrillic sign came into focus and I knew what it said!  

Leaving a place was always bittersweet.  Hosts found their way into my heart and goodbyes were often tearful though the tears were born of the joy from the time together.  You learn so much and yet so little as you pass through other cultures.  You leave behind so much more you could see and know and yet you see ahead new experiences and understandings.  As the train or bus or plane pulls away you look longingly behind, remembering the moments.  You smile, perhaps, doze and then somewhere as the countryside passes outside your window you realize you are reaching a new place, a new experience, a new land.  The circle begins again.   You wander, explore, meet, learn, love, laugh, say goodbye and move on again.  And again. 

And in this rhythm, you feel a part of life’s ebb and flow.  You feel yourself growing, changing, affecting, and being affected.   There is meaning in the moments, in your life.

And yet.

While the rhythm creates a sense of aliveness, of purpose, of direction and meaning, you also know somehow that there is no depth to the movement.  You are washing across the surface of things, of cultures, of countries, of people’s lives.  You are like the waves that crash into the shore – musical movements of water that whisper of all that life is to the people passing their day upon the sand and while they may be life-changing to one who needed that particular song and that particular day, you are, nevertheless, like the waves, temporary, and fleeting.  You wash in, you wash out, and only the memory of your song remains behind.  And you know, though memory can be a powerful force, it is never a present force. 

The waves on the shore are what is left of the great work done within the depths of the ocean.  They are memories of the ocean’s majesty and depth, power and purpose.  They are merely the tendrils of the true movement of the ocean, the crest of what is real and meaningful. 

Each wave is called back to the center, to the body of the ocean.  They do not merely frolic on the shore.  And so, I found, that there was a depth missing to life on the road.  For all the purpose and meaning, for all that I was affecting and effected, for all that the rhythm made me feel a part, and the newness made me feel alive, for all the life-changing encounters, there was a sense of riding on the surface of life; and beneath that sense, a question of how I would create depth in any world I barely touched.

I thought that Transylvania was an effort to root.  It was not, not really, for how do you root in soil you don’t belong in?  It took time, reflection, and a lot of pain to realize it was my last ditch effort to be a story rather than live a life.   I returned to Dallas 1 ½ years ago – largely to rip myself from a deluded dream by undertaking the noble effort of helping my mother.  Somehow in the process I freed myself from the last catch in a life-long effort to make my life sound good; rather than be good. 

So last year I took a dramatic step – dramatic for me anyway – I settled down.  You see running off to Transylvania for a man you knew 48 hours, moving to New York with no job and $400 to your name, taking off to Italy with no plan but to learn Italian, setting off with a nine year old to live out of a van and find a new place to call home, none of these things were dramatic for me.  Those are easy.  The excitement of the new, the unexplored and unseen and unknown, that’s the simple stuff for me.  Maybe it was all those books I read when I was little.  Books are never about the humdrum monotony of everyday life.  No one would read them if they were.  Books are the adventures, the life-changing moments, the shifts in time and life and perspective.  My life was one constant shift; waves crashing in and flowing out again to be replaced by other waves crashing in and flowing out again.  Change jobs, lovers, cities, change, and change again and spin each change into meaning to try to form some core. While the only constant may be change, constant change is not a way to ground a life. 

You know the truth of it?  I suck at this. This sitting still.  I’ve gained forty pounds; my health is deteriorated; I’ve stopped writing; I’ve lost touch with many of the people who touched my days; I get far too little sunshine, and far less exercise; and I’ve lost that beginners mind that travelers look at the world with.

And yet…

And yet, I have been growing something; something unknown and unfamiliar and scary as hell – a foundation.  Solid ground right there beneath my greatest fear – facing me without a changing world to sweep me up and keep me moving.  Part of that foundation is re-tying the bond with my mother that was stretched through tumultuous years and great resentments. Part is being present in my grandfather’s life, by his bed oftentimes, as he dances his last few dances with this life.  Part is being able to offer my (ex) step-daughter a safety net she does not have elsewhere and my son my presence and friendship in a way he wants and couldn’t reach across an ocean of water and his own resentment.  Part is sitting in the scariest unknown I know – stagnation – and seeing what I do here. 

And part, probably the largest part, is waking up in the arms of a man day after day after day who has loved me solidly this year in spite of myself and all my floundering in this stillness.   It has not been a story book romance - I can’t even make a good cocktail party story out of our meeting -  but it is the strongest, truest, clearest relationship I have known, ever.  I believed intimacy came on the other side of the door of honesty, but I hadn’t found a person capable of living in abject honesty.  We share everything – fears, hopes, dreams, laziness, tears, dishes, and dollars.  That love has given me the strength to fall apart; to let go of everything that held me together – my image, my to-do lists, my emails, and even my writing.  And, I believe, it is that love that will give me the strength to put me back together into something I’ve always been scared to be – an ordinary woman living an everyday life, grounded but not clipped, growing like a tree up towards the heaven, down through the earth, all the while standing in place. 

I feel a dawning. Perhaps it is the new year.  Perhaps it is the book that I have pulled out and dusted off. Perhaps it is only my wishful imagining.  But it has brought my fingers to the keyboard again after a year in hibernation; or was it gestation?  Time will tell.

 I do not know if I will succeed in this phase in my life.  I may get scared and run to an Ashram in India or a beach in Bali, where excitement can sustain me.  I may gain another fifty pounds and become another miserable blob buying bonbons at Walmart.  Or maybe, just maybe I will find a yoga practice that deepens, a love that strengthens, and a career that quenches a thirst in my soul as yet unsatiated for my own contribution to this world. 

I do know that last week I welcomed into my home, one of the first hosts who welcomed me into her home all those years ago – and in that full circle I realized, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  

Comments

[steff]

Nice to read from you again Sherry.

Your use of this word, "ordinary", made me think a little. Why are we so afraid about being "ordinary"? Are "extraordinary" people that much happier? Where is the line between both?

The world is full of ordinary people. And extraordinary at the same time. You know this French saying "Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé"? There is always a few persons to whom we are unique and special. Those are our close ones. Family. True friends. Those that are in return special to us and that know us deeply, honestly, like no other.

The world itself is all appearances. We all wear a "social mask" and try to fit. It is also a sane process, a form of protection of self.
As long as it doesn't shape into a habit and we are able to let go of it around the people we love.

Being able to show your naked soul and be loved for it and not despite it is a gift we should sherish. It cannot be given to everyone because it comes along with time, care, trust, patience. Roots indeed help.

Like you said, life is all cycles. Experiences. Expansion VS strengthening. Happy moments VS difficult ones. Revolt VS acceptance. A series of events that progressively shape us and shape the paths we follow. Lessons we learn - sometimes the hard way. It doesn't necessarily make sense at the present moment, especially through hard times when one struggles. But it usually does when you take a step back and look at your evolution. At least this is how I feel about my own life.
Does it ring a bell? Or do I just sound ridiculous to you? :)

However, welcome back into writing dear :)

Stéphanie

[Julie Berryhill]

That is what I needed today! Thanks for the update and I would love for you to keep them coming! Jules

[j]

nice
very nice
j