This is my wondering.

There’s a line from The Color Purple that I keep coming back to:

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.” -Albert

This is my wondering.

I’m most comfortable when I can put a frame around my life. A bullet list. This is where I’ve been and this is where I am and this is where I’m going. I am both stubborn and skilled at creating the frame, all while knowing it won’t fit in 48 hours, and I’ll have to re-frame. When I was a teenager, I knew everything. But now, in my 40s, certainty is a myth. I know nothing at all. My life is framed by questions. 

• At the crossroads of my happiness and the happiness of others, who has the right of way?

• What is considered excessive in the pursuit of comfortable bedding?

• Where is the line between honoring your pain and making it precious?

• Where is the line between free-spiritedness and open rebellion?

• Is there a line?

• What happens when you can’t handle one more thing…and then one more thing happens? And then another? 

• Is wearing my heart on my sleeve exposing my weakness, or my strength?

• How will I define a life well-lived when all my living is done?

• What am I doing in the name of productivity, and what am I truly cultivating?

• Why do dogs have such short lives when they’re so much better people than humans?

• When does one cross over from charmingly whimsical to alarmingly weird? Have I crossed over yet? (I own 15 pairs of overalls.)

• What have I overlooked that I need to seek forgiveness for?

• What am I choosing by not changing?

• What am I losing as I shift?

• Do I have a right to any sort of skepticism when the cycle of my body is controlled by the moon?

• Why do I deny myself the very things I know will soothe me?

• What keeps me from pursuing peace when I know where to find it?

• Why do I procrastinate joy when I know it to be essential?

• What makes me unplug from the outlets I know would ground me, calm me, connect me?

  
  

These are not my answers.

It’s not a guide or a manifesto.

It’s not a clean before-and-after.

It’s a messy middle.

A wild bloom.

A growing season with no planting schedule.

I don’t know what comes next. 

But I’m excited about it.

And I’m writing it down.