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Life is a Pantoum


     "Someday, you'll be up here telling your story," the motivational speaker assured his  audience.  As I drove home, I wept. I was sure that I had no story to tell. I've learned since that what I didn't have is a story I wanted to tell or that I thought others would want to read. I could not come to terms with who I am because who I seemed to be wasn't who I wanted to be or who I thought I had to be to matter. To make matters worse, like most Americans, I tend to define myself by what I do. That leads me into a very dark place because not only has the job I've had not provided that fulfilling sense of identity, but I am no longer doing it, and it has yet to be seen what I shall do. It's not a big step down from a job in retail, but at the moment I am a nobody. I am walking into the future with empty hands.

        No story. No identity. For the romantic this is a  dream come true, to begin again without the baggage of the past. I'm not immune. I'm excited about the possibilities. I have dreams I would love to see become reality. I am not immune to romance of my situation, but neither am I naïve. I know that one's luggage gets returned eventually. The condition of the contents isn't really the fault of the baggage handlers. I know that when I get where I'm going, I will have brought myself with me. I may be walking into the future with empty hands, but I am still the one making the journey.  Life is like a pantoum. [1]

           So, taking the same old me on a journey to a new life, I find myself setting the same old goals as if a new setting will provide the magic to make what has failed succeed. I've been here before, too. In Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, he taught that one discovers one's mission in life by asking "What do I want to be? What do I want to do? On what principles do I want to base my being and doing?" They are good questions but they led to years of struggling and searching, because none of the mission statements that I wrote seemed to work. One day on the way home from work, I was breaking my arm to pat myself on the back for solving some problem I can no longer recall.

      "Why are you so surprised that you solved that problem?" The thought flashed through my mind in a "voice" that was clearly not mine. "That's what you do. That's what you are." As I drove the rest of the way home, I struggle with my mission was put in a new light. It wasn't about what I wanted to be, etc. What I wanted was not the question. It wasn't about becoming or accomplishing, but about being. My mission is to be who I am created and designed to be, right here, right now.

       I have been thinking about walking into the future and setting goals for the future in the same way. Goals are supposed to be the stepping stones to accomplishing a mission, but if a mission is about now, then aren't goals as well? It is not who, what, where or how I want to be in six months. It is about being who and what and how I am right now and about making conscious choices that are consistent with my design -with my real identity. It's about dealing with what is here and now using eternal principles in a way that brings about the best for all concerned, and leave telling my story to One who is writing it.

            At least, that's the first level goal.


[1] A pantoum is a French version of a Malaysian form of poetry that requires that the second and fourth line of each stanza become (approximately at least) the first and third line of the next. The final quatrain repeats lines from the first - the baggage from the past.... Here's an example of my own.
 
If I Could See
 
I wonder... if I could see through Your eyes
I open to the door to my imagination
I see the tapestry You are weaving
The threads shimmer in Your eyes.
I open the door to my imagination
There is love...joy...peace...and such infinite patience.
They shimmer in Your eyes.
We delight in them.
There is love...joy...peace, and such infinite patient
As they form a picture
(And we delight in it)
of You
As they form a picture
of Light  and shadow. How can it be
Of you?
It's more than just anything...or everything
Light without shadow, but only an image
I see the tapestry You are weaving
It's more than anything...or everything
I wonder...if I could see through Your eyes.
 

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