I asked my son Michael tonite whether he has a need to feel he made it forward a step toward some goal or other each day, or whether he just “goes along.” Somehow he understood me and said he thinks he’s more in the “just go along” mode most of the time, though at work he likes it better when he has some goal or challenge to meet. My bet is that, as a Libra, when he has a partner and they’re getting along (and last year he got “married” to a really nice person) that he’s fine. I think a partner takes up that space for most people. I know with my husband in my life there was always the sense that he would bring something into the day, whether some love moments, or an idea, or a suggestion..........it wasn’t all dependent on me. I think that’s something most people run away from. Alone, I keep busy and am full of thoughts, but in those moments, like tonite, waiting for the water to boil.....there was that sense that it’s just me, or you - and the room and whatever you are and whatever your life is....... And that can seem scarey. People drink and shop and work to avoid those moments. “Just what is my life anyway?” “Just who am I anyway?” "What is my place in all this? "And what IS all this?" (Life.) I think we all start out in our teens and twenties with such big ideas, big dreams......and somewhere in our forties there’s an assessment of whether we made it or not. That’s the point at which our abilities and effort and luck has tested those dreams. People with more talent may not hit that til their fifties. I can’t tell you how many really talented people I’ve known - two husbands and one close friend, and at least 4 people I’ve known well - from our early days in the “big city” - all talented musically and artistically, way beyond the average talents (which I have, myself,) who did not “make it” one whit. Some were in bands, made records, even got a little “name,” knew the big names personally........but for whatever reason did not fulfill that early promise. When you reach that point of assessment in your forties or fifties.....I think one’s reaction to the recognition that maybe you’re NOT going to be all you thought you might, is the testing, and hopefully the making of the “man.” So many people drink or do too much drugs, or begin to live a fantasy, or bury themselves in one thing or another to avoid the pain of not living up to themselves. Or go into depression or decline. In grad school I ran into the concept of “Existential Anxiety” with a great feeling of recognition - “oh it’s not just me” who feels this pain, this anxiety of the discrepancy - the distance - between who I am and this great person I feel inside me.
For me, in my twenties, there were 3 dreams. (Having children was not one of them, tho I started at 19 and always adored my children.) The primary, and unrealized one - I’m not sure when it started.........maybe it was always there. In high school I was considered “the dancer” though I only took classes as a young child. But I was always the one chosen to lead the dances, to be in the performances, etc. I remember with such a leap of joy the dance role I was given in my 8th grade graduation.....the leap being literal, onto the stage at the height of a passage in Swan Lake, when I swear I soared into the heavens, carried on that incredible outrush of music. I was and am a natural dancer - music just moves my body. I’ve had the experience of dancing all over the room, in fairly recent years, with no effort whatsoever....just carried. When I hear music I CANNOT sit still. If there’s reasonable music in the room, that’s where my attention is. If the music is good, it dances me. This is the greatest love of my life. It was always clear to me that I would find some venue for dancing myself, my Being, in a way that would be healing for people who watched it. Always clear to me - and yet it never happened. Now I can say I never made it happen. For instance, I have hardly ever taken a dance class. One might think that would be the place to start, though it was improvisational not stylized dance I wanted anyway. Besides I never had money and I always had children, so there was no realistic chance.........or so it always seemed. And now I am 69. I think I have to admit to myself that there is a good chance that it ain’t gonna happen. There is one outlet for me - a physical form of telling stories which I have practiced in a group for the last 6 years. But the few performances I’ve tried have been failures. It’s too important to me to do it well, and I become very constrained - squeezed through a small sieve - in front of an audience. So perhaps it will never happen; or not in this lifetime. Once upon a time that recognition would have been a great sorrow, but now it just is. And there is a little feeling that I can nonetheless dance the dance of being me, all the time, in my life. I am less expressive than many, especially young, people - but more than many. So I’ll just continue being me however that occurs, and live with that.
I said there were three dreams. That was the huge one. Another was to build my own house. In my twenties, talking in the cafeteria at the college with other “back to the land”-minded friends, I felt I could run up the side of a mountain and build my house at the top. Unfortunately I didn’t find my piece of land until twenty years later. But I still built it, me working with one male carpenter friend for the first few months, and then me, alone. But that is another story.
The last dream was to be a psychiatrist. That dream began when I was 12 years old, and read a book of my mother’s: Anna Kavan’s “Asylum Piece.” I wanted to treat sick people more humanely than those people were treated, and I never again wanted to study anything but psychology. So after my first two children, I got my BA in Psych. And 20 years later went back for my MA. And as the song says, “Two out of three ain’t bad.” So tonite - boiling water in the kitchen of that home which I built myself - and coming to that moment of awareness, of acknowledging my life and my self - it felt okay. Not that I thought about any of these things - I was just there, just present in that moment in time, and it was okay.
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