Expectant and Anxious
Many times in my life I have experienced a sustained longing for something more. Some television show, movie, or speech calls to my soul and says it is time to reach for the stars.
As Jungian analyst James Hollis says, the ego is a tyrant that desires only power and safety, which is tragic because both will eventually fail us. In The Heart Aroused, David Whyte says the ultimate safest place is a cemetery. Power and safety have their limits.
While the ego is interested in power and safety, the soul is interested in the ride. The soul is most connected to the right hemisphere of the brain, the primary hemisphere, the one that places everything in context and communicates with us in longings that struggle for words. These longings show up in well-told stories, paintings, photographs, and songs. They create awe, a decidedly right brain experience.
It is instructive to me to reflect on the specific elements that conspire to create this longing in me. The writing of Aaron Sorkin does it, whether in the West Wing or Newsroom. The novels of Wendell Berry (his essays being left-brain in their focus.) David Lean films, the film work of Roger Deakins, or television shows created by Carlton Cuse (Lost) can bring it forth. Musically it might be a great performance in a Broadway show, music of the vocal group Voctave, or 19th century hymns.
We grow complacent and allow the ego to have its way, lying on the couch, numbing itself on MSNBC, nothing but a viewer powerless to bring about change. Smart phones have not been good for the species. They invite endless scrolling, mindless time with the irrelevant. Too often the same is true with social media, feigning human connection when we are in reality incarnate beings with the need to physically connect, not via an electronic screen. Social media avoids genuine human contact, with its body language, subtle shifts in intonation, eyes telling their own stories, and a plethora of other subtle clues inaccessible on a screen.
I am not a Luddite, I just wish those who created these tools had thought about whether or not they were good for the souls of those for whom they were created. We live in a left-brain-centric, right-brain-deficient civilization, where the important questions are rarely asked. That is why we are lonelier than ever.
When I am jolted out of my acedia by one of these gifts of creative magic I realize I have been settling, and it is again time to unsettle and look to the stars. As David Whyte says in Sweet Darkness, the night has a horizon further than you can see. The possibilities are endless, a constantly expanding universe.
To what am I being called? I’m not sure. Discerning a call is rarely easy. The easy ones turn out to be somebody else’s call, not ours. True calls combine fear with excitement, the paradoxical alchemy of being inexorably pulled upward and ahead, into the unknown, expectant and frightened.
I currently serve as Mayor Pro Tem, an interesting position. I’ll leave it at that. Am I being called to another position in politics? Heaven knows the political world needs those who answer to soul, not ego, those with nothing left to prove. Or maybe it is to find that new TED Talk that can expand my speaking platform. My agent already has my next book proposal, so I’m just waiting to see what publisher picks it up. But I think it may be something that has not risen to the surface just yet, some way in which I need to stretch myself within my gifts.
I was asked to audition for the lead role in a feature film that began shooting in Toronto last month. I gave it a thought for a minute, but I knew it wasn’t for me. Speaking of acting, there is a character in a Sorkin television show that resonates with me. I’m still puzzling through the reason. Interestingly, the actor is also represented by my speaker’s agency. I’d like to meet sometime, or better yet, speak on the same platform.
Mary Oliver’s The Journey begins, “One day you knew what you had to do and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice…” I do not yet know what I have to do. I am waiting for it to come. This is life, discerning the next call onto what Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey. Discerning and answering the call gets no easier with the passing of time. That much I know. Most calls require you to let go of something to which your ego is clinging before you can take hold of something new.
The older you get the less comfortable you are letting go and reaching out. The resistance is about time and its passing. You wonder if you are too old. But if you succumb to that temptation, you already have one foot in the vicinity of the grave. It’s a shame to die of sheer boredom.
I’ll let you know once I have a little more clarity about my current restlessness. Until then I’ll listen for the still small voice that arrives in the thin places.
And so it goes.
