Little To Do
I rummage around in a world that has little to do with me. Oliver Sacks
I don’t. Not anymore, anyway. And what I’m hoping in writing the Little Books is that you won’t either.
I have no idea what the context was, but I saw that line and I liked it. I think it resonates with far too many people. I think we spend a lot of time in our lives living in ways we set up to please others, to do the '“right thing,” and to appeal to the world around us. How is it possible that we can live decades not really knowing who the heck we are, separate from everyone else?
Sure, we’re relational people, I get that. We’re defined by our families and friends and communities. And that’s great and it should be that way, but we also have to be sure that we can pull away from that at any moment in time and stand on our own, fully aware of who we are without those defining features.
If all of that went poof tomorrow, would you know who you are?
I was thinking a lot, in and out of sleep, over the course of the night, of passageways. In part because that’s a big part of the work I talk about in The Little Book of Living, finding one’s way back to one’s self. And, curiously, because we are currently raising money to build a new set of stairs to the second floor at the church. The old set is rickety and narrow and unsafe.
At some point in my half-sleep I thought about all the different houses I’ve lived in and all the different stairways in those houses. It was fun to go back and recall the stairs … the places, the times.
When we were teenagers in Saratoga a bunch of us played a game called Dungeons & Dragons a lot. I really had no idea what the heck was going on, it was a social thing, but I do recall a few of us girls asking Are there any secret passageways? with a fair amount of frequency, and then dissolving into laughter.
Passageways, movement through space and time.
I taught and lived at Emma Willard School for a while. There are underground passageways there.
I lived in a house with a circular stairway. I had a blind dog at the time. Disaster.
Stairs felt treacherous when I started having kids. We started needing gates then.
Stairs are a great form of exercise now that I’m so forgetful!
Once you start playing with something, you can see how many directions it can go … still, I work on Sunday mornings 💒 so I have to get to the point.
Here it is: each of us was born with a core that was clear, crisp and humming with life. Unburdened by fear, worry, embarrassment. Unblemished by other peoples’ desires for us. A core of grace and peace, unique and powerful. Over the many years of rummaging around here in a world that has little to do with you, your connection to the nuclear reactor inside you got weaker and weaker. This manifested in your life as confusion, lack of self worth, lack of boundaries in relationships, lack of drive to create, anger, frustration. You ruminate on the past and worry about the future. Not only are you not living in your own truth, you’re not even living in today.
It’s not working.
The time has come for you to find your way back to your center and live there. We are going to need a new set of stairs, a couple of secret passageways and a gate or two.
This is the only worthwhile journey of this life, the only thing that matters, the only way you will find peace.
I’m 57 years old and I can say with confidence that I have finally met myself.
To be sure, this process does not end. The work is the work of a lifetime. Getting there requires tenacity, courage, humor, truth, stamina. But the view … oh the view …
One step at a time, my friends, one step at a time …