Six weeks ago I “enjoyed” a bout of malaise—ultimately tamed by art that spoke of grace, of acceptance. I was fresh off a winter of recovering from knee surgery—and for good measure—kidney stones and bronchitis. I’d been sedentary, reclusive, flat-out waited on. My recovering knees felt like they were held together by thick rubber bands. My walls, even with their art, had become the outer limits of my world rather than our big sky. Those eight sequestered months served their purpose. But took a toll.
It’s summer now. My porch geraniums and tomatoes thrive. My annual June visitors—John and Linda—have come and gone. I haven’t worn socks for a couple weeks. The windows are open. It’s root beer float season. My knees allow me to pick up cat toys off the floor. What more could I want? Especially since I crave these days all the rest of the year.
So, now on the far side of my cloistered life—I want to live. More. Larger. More fully. To move from placidity to purpose. To get the hell off my duff and DO. To end and begin days thinking about more than keeping myself contented with good books and cookies. (I wish that I were employing literary license here, but I’m not.)
This isn’t, of course, a revolutionary wish. There are dozens of quotations from luminaries exhorting us to LIVE. To wear purple. To go anything but gently into that good night. To answer Mary Oliver’s query, “. . . what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” And time, after all, in my wild and precious life, is whizzing by. If not now, when!
But, as I finish another chapter in yet another good book, I struggle with just what living LARGE means for me—now. In 2024, at this age. Of course just thinking about what I MIGHT do, is not DOING. It’s not getting my buns out of the recliner.
I began—a couple days ago—by making a list:
- Invite people over more often.
- Go to more programs and movies.
- Cook a little – especially things I can feed other people.
- Try moving back to bed – rather than settling in to this odd recliner arrangement. [It’s a long story that began when I had bronchitis.]
- Walk. Walk. Walk.
- Practice climbing stairs.
- Eat fruit and vegetables.
- Listen to music.
- Go for weeks at a time without buying anything but food—even at thrift stores.
- Play the piano.
- Write. Write. Write—even drivel. Even if I have to rely on writing prompts.
- Take off in the car—see Montana.
- Sit on the porch, close my eyes, and take in the world.
- Write cards and emails and letters every day.
- SEE specifics in daily life that will make outgoing correspondence interesting.
- Play around with collage—my only real craft.
- Flesh out the items on this list.
I let this list simmer for a few days and even acted on a couple of the bulleted items. It didn’t much help. I felt all the old, familiar constraints, resistances, laziness. I indulged in my shopworn, disheartening bargaining: “OK, I’ll write these three thank-you notes and then I can hurry back to my book and chair.”
The list and my skimpy response held no power or freedom. I wasn’t living larger. I was still existing within “shoulds.” Still keeping the familiar and the easy within reach.
Then I tried to think of more noble projects. MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE projects. What about sponsoring a child in a foreign country. Biting the bullet and making phone calls for one of the candidates I favor. For sure committing to a decent volunteer position again.
I fumbled around with that idea for a couple more days—knowing—at some subterranean level—that I’d be slow to take on anything big.
Next I summoned advice from the self-help books I’d bought and wrapped myself around hungrily in the 90s. Seeking then—as now–for just the right formula, just the right incantation to live better: Be in the now. Be present. Focus. Feel the fear and do it anyway. I am good enough. I am beautiful, inside and out. I am exactly where I need to be. My voice is powerful. I embrace the wisdom that comes with each passing year.
Yikes! None of those admonitions was wrong. They just didn’t amount to Bibbity Bobbity Boo. For sure, then as now, it’s midnight and I’m still me. I have not been instantly transformed into a more expansive soul.
Finally, finally, when I got quiet enough inside and out, I got closer to diagnosing what keeps me caught in a careful existence: the growing up messages to not stand out, to be a good girl, to be careful, to not risk a leg or a heart or all my money. And to those messages, I’ve added ones related to age: will it be dark when I drive home; is there a bathroom close by; will I be able to hear; how silly and impossibly old will I look; how tired will I be. And maybe the most insidious of all: you’re old; you’re entitled to rest; you’ve put in your time; likely there’s tomorrow.
What a lot of fear-mongers and killjoys those voices are! Once again, not altogether wrong. Just not helpful.
It took another few days of discontent before I looked at my arm. And considered why and when I’d gotten three different tattoos. I’d chosen them all in moments when I was hopeful, expansive, living beyond the rules. Every time I’d selected new words for my arm, I’d done so—not for shock value, not on a whim—but as a vow, a declaration to myself about how I intended to live. They were meant to be powerful reminders to live life to the limit. To live the kind of days and emotions that I sought now.
Rather than taking them for granted now, I needed to “hear” in them again what I heard the first time: possibility, joy, vigor, purpose. The very moods in which I’d scoped out local tattoo artists and walked through their doors:
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes
Still Learning How to Fly
Don’t Stop Me Now
Reliving the hours when I decided to add these words permanently to my body, I felt more whole, more alive. I could summon again the consciousness, the excitement, the possibilities that surround living large—as I had intended then.
Yes, Yes–as opposed to no or maybe. Yes—as opposed to despair.
Learning and Flying—being curious, asking for more information, asking big questions, taking off into circumstances and places unknown, heading out into uncertainty.
And going on, however I can—not stopping at all. Floating in ecstasy, defying the laws of gravity, having such a good time.
I still need that first list of activities for the moments I’m at loose ends. When I need to be reminded of projects that will contribute to the world, that will bring me satisfaction. Those projects and tasks are likely the warp and woof of living larger.
But in the end, I experience emotional courage and liveliness and wonder less from a checklist and more from remembered joy and purpose. From breathtakingly bigger emotions. From an inestimable awareness that life, that the universe is enormous, flyable, exquisite! And that I am beyond fortunate to be alive in it. ©
