Should She Go to India . . .

                    Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.            

                                            —  Helen Keller

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

          — Yogi Berra

Some time ago a woman wrote to one of the advice columnists in the newspaper. She had been given some money from her parents —  who wanted her put the money toward her retirement savings. The question she was asking the columnist was if it would be alright to instead use the money to fulfill a dream. This woman always had wanted to go to India, but her income had not been sufficient for her to save enough money go.

Responses from readers were fascinating. Usually when an emotional question elicits a lot of responses from readers, a few are printed — and then the column moves on from there. In this case readers have continued to respond to the question of whether the woman should use the money to go to India.

One group of people believes the woman would be foolish to use this small windfall. The most recent response suggested the woman could perhaps experience the essence of India without leaving home. And that the woman would come to regret using the money for travel and then find herself unable to retire at age seventy.

A second group of readers says “go for it, woman!” They see the money as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And that the woman will have all of these memories of her experience to savor in her later years. One person did the math and computed the number of years the woman would have in order to adequately fund her retirement —  and still use this unexpected money to fulfill her dream.

The columnist said it was interesting that all the people who advised the woman to stay home had never traveled themselves.

It was this statement that caught my eye. It would seem the original question divided people into those who travel and believe that travel has a value far beyond the dollars invested. Those people with a more conservative perspective valued opportunities to protect their security, especially during the elder years.

As Ben Franklin says:

We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour

each day making choices . . .

Each choice is made in the context of whatever

value system we have selcted to govern our lives

The illusion that we control our lives is just that —  an illusion. The reality is that all of life is filled with unexpected circumstances. Even so, we alternate between periods in which we believe our decisions give us security and times when our lives are turned upside down.

Our best decision-making strategy needs to recognize we can not control the universe! There is a fine balance between the wisdom of caution and daring to take advantage of opportunities that walk right into our lives. A lost job, a death of a loved one, betrayal by someone we trusted, economic turmoil affecting our retirement plans, or a catastrophic loss to our home —  the list is long.

We can use hold those circumstances close to our hearts and try to devise lives that protect us from future events. Or we can acknowledge that we do not get to save ourselves. And turn our losses into opportunities. Even as we may grieve what has been handed us.

Should she travel to India, this woman with a dream? Some people do not want to risk leaving the comforts of home in order to travel. I certainly can testify that traveling is not for the faint-hearted! We may sleep in beds that do not comfort our bodies. Strange food confronts us. The prospect of trauma from difficulties that we may encounter is always a risk. Culture shock is real —  both in going to new places as well as coming home from such places.

However, I would not have traded any travel-experiences I have had for the security of my familiar home. Travel has formed and transformed me in ways I could never have imagined.

I think of some of those events. Last April we set sail for Japan and the north Pacific only to encounter sea ice driven south from the high Arctic. When the ice floes became so frequent that our ship could not pass through, our ship had to return to Japan to find another route to Alaska. I had the experience of a lifetime because it is not likely I will ever travel by ship through the Arctic that lies above Canada.

A trip to Bangkok was on hold until just weeks before —  due to protests in the streets. In the current news, we watch street protests in Athens happening in the square in front of the Parliament building - just outside our hotel window where we stayed several years earlier. 

A window between violence in Kenya gave me another experience of  high adventure in Africa. There I watched a female lion drive her adolescent son out of the pride because it was time he made a life of his own. Three male lions with big manes watched the whole drama along with us.

Crossing the north Atlantic, we sailing through rough seas with forty foot waves — and then hid out from Hurricane Earl as it moved north and we sailed south. We were just 100 miles from its eye. Or being unable to make landing in the Falkland Islands, when fog was so thick you could not see your hand in front of your face. The twenty-foot waves would have made the two-mile trip to the main island (in the equivalent of a lifeboat) unwise and a bit too much.

Not all of my travel experiences have been those of high adventure. The wonder of being in places that once were only dreams. Conversations in cafes with folks at the next table and wandering cities like Paris and London. Watch a wedding procession while sitting at a sidewalk café in Seville and sharing vicariously in the celebration with all the guests, bride and groom. And matriarch of the family brought up the rear in grand style, a woman about 4 foot 6 with a magnificent mantilla upon her head that must have been at least a foot tall.

Or being part of history in the making. Being in what was Eastern Germany a year after reunification. And hearing stories of people in Northern Ireland about what the Troubles had meant to them.

Some of my collection of memories were camping high in the mountains and eating the gift of a neighbor’s just-caught trout. There were the important times that we shared with our children as they grew up. Memories now embedded in my bones of the beauty of high mountain passes, blooming deserts, red rock canyons, and endless solitary ocean beaches.

If we had saved “all that money” we spent on travel, we certainly now would be living a grand life of ease. Stock markets gyrations and the politics of sequester and fiscal cliffs in Washington would be much less of cause for concern. But we would have the same issues of health that all of us face as we age - ours and friends. We would still face the likelihood that one of us will die before the other. And I noticed that a freak hailstorm this November that meant a new roof did not discriminate among the residents of our neighborhood! 

To the woman who dreams of India I would say go for it! And not just because traveling to India is one of the places I have not yet figured out how to make happen in my own life.

Our dreams can sometimes become realities in such unexpected ways.





On Being a Cat

Dogs can be taught almost anything for a reward.

Cats look at you as though you have lost your mind,

then walk away to do their own thing . . .

I must have been a cat in a former life.

After my colleague-husband and I finished our latest book, Conversations • Images and Poetry, it was time for a breather. The process had been exhausting, with some glitches that  we previously had not encountered with earlier books. What I needed was a little rest and recreation to re-energize my writing voice. A road trip to North Carolina was just what I needed! There we visited friends and walked the sand beaches of the Outer Banks.

However, this breather stretched into a longer period of minimal writing. I waited — and waited — for the next project to appear. Previous projects always had announced themselves without much effort on my part. Sometimes they would even show up during the final stages of proofs and printing a book. This time nothing tweaked my curiosity or imagination.

Months went by. I was totally uninspired. I began asking myself what was going on within me. Writing Conversations had been like climbing Denali or Mount Everest, a culmination of years of writing and photography. Maybe this pause was about some transition in how I wrote or what genre' I chose.

Perhaps — but no jolt jump started my writing. No seeds of re-definition sprouted like the fragrant Sweet Annie herb that appeared in new places every spring in my garden.

Then an epiphany arrived — at the same time as the Epiphany of the liturgical year. A gift arrived from some unknown place. The great aha for which I had been looking. I was following around a rutabaga at the end of a stick. 

A rutabaga? You know — rutabagas, those rather homely tan and purple root vegetables that you pass by in the grocery or farmers market every fall. Now, rutabagas are not a vegetable of which I am not particularly fond  — and my husband refuses to eat them. Thus, no rutabaga never had crossed the threshold of our lives!  

A carrot I could understand — dangling at the end of a string tied to a stick, coaxing a horse or donkey to get in gear and move forward. I am fond of carrots. But this foreign vegetable? Wherever this image came from, it persisted in my mind. What in the world might it be trying to tell me on my writer’s path?

For non-published folks, there is bit of an aura of mystery about writers of books. They believe writers lead somewhat glamorous lives. However, writing is not that alluring image. Writing and finding an audience for one’s work is nine-tenths hard work and one part luck of the draw.

I had put in my time pursuing success as a writer. I had several books to my name, took writing classes to hone my writing skills, attended conferences to network, published op-ed pieces, taught at several literary centers, did public readings of my work, marketed my books, created two blogs, and belonged to several writing groups. And among all that activity, I did manage to find time for writing. It was be fair to say I’d accomplished my goal of becoming successful as a writer.

But following a rutabaga, this earthy commoner? I might not have noticed a carrot, but this unattractive vegetable caused me to do a double take.

It dawned on me that the gift of this metaphor was about the external motivators in this decidedly unglamorous profession. Motivators that somehow had captured me and were running my writing life.

I stopped looking for that next project. Instead, I spent time reflecting about how I’d come to be a writer. Neither writing nor photography were things I’d ever dreamed about doing. In fact earlier in my life, I’d have laughed out loud if someone has suggested such crazy ideas.

When I did begin writing in earnest, it was because I felt called to this strange occupation. Hours of solitary time when the goal is communicating with others. A low-reward system with sparse feedback — other than the thrill of holding a completed book in my hands, seeing my name in print, or an occasional person who tells me my writing has meant something to them. An often laborious process of re-writing and editing. And unruly words that frequently take me somewhere unintended.

But in the process of becoming, I traded my calling for a profession. I realized I needed to stop following all these skills I learned. Not stop doing them (because they still were necessary), but stop traipsing  around behind them as though they were the raison d'etre of writing. I had to return to writing from my heart and soul. Writing what I needed to express — before any consideration of whether I was writing something that would “sell” or speak to anyone else.

My internal reflection broadened beyond writing. What motivates any of us to do what we do? Of course, external demands of our time and energy determine much of our behavior. We don’t say to a boss that is not what I feel called to do today. A certain number of things need doing, in order to keep our lives working — from buying groceries and filling the car with gas to ensuring we have clean bodies that won’t offend others.

The externals in our lives coax us onward. They can appear to be what motivates us to take up a cause, express our opinions, do kind things for others, or spent precious energy on issues that may or may not end in success. And those external motivators may be what keeps us going — especially on those days when we’d rather roll over in bed and sleep in or forget about accomplishing a thing.

There are no easy answers. What answers that exist are unique to each of us. I can’t tell you what to do with your life — your one wild and precious life as the poet Mary Oliver describes it. I can’t even answer the question for myself half of the time.

Becoming a writer was never a career choice for me. Writing took me over, not the other way around. Gradually, playing with the music of words and how they interact with each other captured my attention and led me deeper into the literary world. I’ve always loved Pablo Neruda’s lines in “Poetry” where he says:

                      And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived

                      in search of me. I don’t know. I don’t know where

                      it came from, from winter or a river.

                      I don't know how or when,

                      no they weren't voices, they were not

                      words, nor silence,

                      but from a street I was summoned . . .  

But here I am! It was not that I’d lost my writer’s voice. I just had to quit following that blessed rutabaga around, concentrating on doing all those things writers do to become heard. I needed to trust that in good time, words again would flow from within me.

It is the way it always has been for all of us. Sometimes we are not fortunate to have work that chooses us. The work that we do may be out of sheer necessity — to support ourselves, our families. Or we become parents when it was not our intention at that time in our lives — and we had to embrace a different lifestyle than what we intended. Or we may live somewhere we’d rather not be.

But if we can distinguish the rutabagas from the small insistent voice from within us, the universe will find the means for expressing our unique calling in surprising ways.

Remember . . .  I never set out to be a photographer or a writer.