A kinder, gentler wrecking

Don’t you love it when the right book shows up just when you need it? After ordering a book I’d suggested, Vicki sent me a suggestion for another book, and it couldn’t have shown up at a better time. I think the writer crawled into my brain, studied my random thoughts for awhile, and, like a doctor, prescribed just the right medication for what’s ailing me.

I’ve underlined so many things already, and I’m only on page 57. This one, for example, could have been pulled almost verbatim from my recent blog posts: “Some have felt eager and engaged by their work for years and then walked into their office one fine morning to find their enthusiasm gone, their energies spent, their imaginations engaged in secret ways, elsewhere.” Hmmm… secret ways? Yup, I got ‘em.

On the bus yesterday, I underlined this quote: “For most of us, an inner parental voice continually keeps the world at bay. It says, ‘Life is precarious; you young cannot know how precarious. Don’t add to the sum total of difficulty that awaits you: Stay off the moors; Stay off the ocean, stay away from the edge, don’t follow the intensity of your more passionate dreams, find safe work, and adventure not into your own nature lest it lead you directly into nature itself. Adventure only on the weekends of life and not in the working week.’”

I nearly choked on that quote. It stirred so many things for me, a lot of them related to the reason I chose “fearlessness” as my word for the year. How many times have I chosen what’s safe? How many times have I failed to “adventure into my own nature”?

The other thing it stirred in me was the concern that I have become that parental voice for my children. More than anything, I want them to be authentic, bold, and passionately in search of their own calling and nature. But sometimes, let’s face it, a mother’s first concern is that they be safe. How do we balance those desires for our children without messing them up in the process?

When I went grocery shopping last night, I took my “Wreck this Journal” along, thinking I’d do something silly with it. Instead though, with these book-induced thoughts spinning through my mind, I took a detour to my son’s grave and did some wrecking of a kinder, gentler variety.