Instinct to Nest

I’ll have to say this for the process of turning downstream.  It’s hard to get used to at first.  Terrifying.  Old waves of resistance are still making themselves known.  The boat may be flowing freely, but when your hand has been on the tiller heading upstream against the current, when you have spent most of your life trying to “tie up” to various buoys and rocks in the stream to keep from running free, it’s strange, even alarming, to feel the boat moving so quickly in the other direction.  And it’s a challenge to stop focusing on the landscape that I’ve left and start to imagine the landscape I’m headed for.

But even more challenging is getting all those seemingly irreconcilable parts of oneself to even acknowledge each other, much less get along.  I’ve been blessed with an almost unheard of spectrum of intellectual, creative, spiritual, intuitive, even organizational gifts, and unique aspects and interests.  To further this boat metaphor, they have been my “crew.”  And yet over the years, when I tied up to any given mooring, buoy or rock in the stream – be it family, friendships, institutions or jobs – I usually trotted only one or two crewmembers out onto the deck for inspection, leaving most of my skills, sullen and rejected, below decks.  When I arrived at a different setting, I’d switch to another skill.  I believed that I had to limit myself in order to fit in anywhere.

So the most interesting aspect of this last week or so of floating more freely on the river of life is just letting go of that belief.  I’ve brought my whole crew out onto the deck.  Heck, they need the air, the sun, and the companionship.  They have started the tentative process of getting to know one another, of working together, even loving one another.  All hands are literally on deck.  As captain, I have to say I like it.  And after even a week, it is hard to imagine returning to the paradigm of closing the hatch on any of them, even though they are a paradoxical lot.  From this point forward, I intend that any income I draw to me will be because of the full crew.  I intend that any home I land in will be safe and comfortable for all of me.

One good sign, I think, is that after years of getting rid of books, I have started to accumulate some new ones.  When you have nowhere to put them, books are a horror.  They are too heavy.  But something in me is stubbornly saying, the corner will be turned here.  I want this book and I will keep it.  The friend I am staying with said, “Hmm, getting the instinct to nest?”  Yes, I think I am.  Not right here in the middle of the stream, but I’m preparing for the day when my boat enters that safe harbor, and I have a house.  I will have a bookshelf.  It will be filled with a colorful patchwork of books reflecting all my interests.  And I cannot tell you how good that feels.