Riding The Train

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Joan Didion.

I vacillate between these two quotes on a good day. On a bad day I am apt to curl into a fetal position and give up the ghost.

I spend a lot of time examining my life, and what I have discovered in my thorough study is a lot of regret, even as I face new situations that offer yet more regret. As much as I try, I cannot see the future. I am no oracle, no visionary. My gut instinct is way off. Meanwhile, the things happening now get short shrift while I am mired in regret, and therefore, I make new mistakes to regret tomorrow.

And right now, more than any other time in my life, I need to be able to see where my life is going because I am making decisions that will affect my life for the remainder of it, and I have no trouble admitting that I am scared.

So, if I turn to what I feel is the right course of action, I definitely have a gut feeling, but is it just a story I wish to be true?

I know what I want to be true, but if things were that simple, we would all be a lot happier. I have learned through heartache that no matter how much we want something to be right, whether it is or not is a matter of time and circumstance to be revealed slowly.

I need to know now if my path is the correct one. I have prayed and meditated, considered all options, tried to talk to others, but the fog in my life remains. I cannot see past it. Worse, talking to others has actually clouded the field even more. Everyone has a different opinion, a different story to tell.

When in this kind of situation, I find emotional triggers embedded in literally every situation in life. Someone helps an elderly woman to her car with her packages. Another person goes out of her way to bring joy and comfort to people she barely knows during the holidays. Someone else encourages a person, or offers a quick, “You can do this. Keep trying.” I witness these acts and listen for the voice, the hand, to reach out and touch me, nudge me ever so gently in the right direction.

I believe in the inter-connectedness of all things. Nothing is chance. There is a purpose, there is a why. What frustrates me is that I do not know the why. By the time I figure it out, I have moved into the land of hindsight. So I sleep restlessly through the night, find myself dreaming during the day, pondering, wondering. Where is this going? Where is this train taking me?

I tell myself the story that things will be revealed in time. It is a good story, and the only one I’ve got right now.

I hear the steel wheels clacking over the rails. I see the hills and valleys flying past the windows of the train. I know that I am moving somewhere, accelerating toward something, but I must live with the uncertainty. I exist with the missing why.

I must consider every step of my path while telling myself that I am going somewhere. I must embrace the unknowable, revel in the mystery. In the end, to paraphrase John Henry Newman, we must keep going, even though the night is dark and we feel so far from home.