Welcome Home

Wait, are we there yet?

Usually I arrive at my front door and think ahh, I’m home! But every now and then I want to ask someone Are we there yet? Surely, THIS can’t be it.

Because, no matter how many hydrangea I fill our kitchen with, no matter how many socks I pick up, counters I wipe, pillows I fluff or blankets I fold, it’s still me. And I am the biggest mess.

With my scattered thoughts and propped up propositions about being better.

I forget, repeatedly and predictably, I forget.

Home is not just a physical place; it’s an emotional-spiritual space. As a mom, a working person, an A-type doer, the offspring of a go-go family in a now-now time-frame and the product of a more-more culture I live in the land of accomplishment-based reality.

What have you done? What are you doing? What are you going to do?

And what are you going to do when that’s done?

Yes, the peaceful pleasures of a laid-back life.

I would argue that this is how stuff gets done, This is what passion and ambition mixed with a good work ethic looks like. And with the incredible opportunities we have in this country it is our privilege and responsibility not to squander them.

But… and this is a pretty big but, why are we doing it all?

This is usually where my mind chimes in with the famous excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, The Man In The Arena.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

My mind offers it up as a declaration against laziness and the crowning argument for not being a sideline operator. But, lately, this perspective is feeling a little brittle. Like there’s no more life left in it.

So I thought what if I am not so intent on being the fighter? What if I am everyone in the arena, the bull, the fighter and the bystanders… And from this new vantage point, I began wondering about a few things.

Am I in the right arena?

What am I fighting for? And why?

These are not frivolous flighty philosophical inquiries. They are the foundation of our very being. Is what we’re doing guided by intrinsic motivation? Does it come from the source of who we are, from the wellspring of whole-hearted desire?

Finding and living in this arena takes courage.

And what is courage?

I know, for me, the idea of courage gets dangerously close to simply fighting fear.

I never frame it that way though. My well-practiced sales pitch goes something like this… It takes strength and resilience to commit to a set of tactics we can strategically execute to be our best self.

Unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be) the veneer on this sales pitch is wearing thin, the truth becoming uncomfortably clear. It is not so much about becoming my best self so much as avoiding incidental and epic personal failure. And trouble-shooting potentially catastrophic scenarios.

For moms, these usually involve our children, with escalating what if… scenarios.

What if my daughter loses her way?

What if she is socially rejected and misses three months of school due to social anxiety? What if she is beautiful but feels ugly? Smart but feels stupid? Creative but feels totally untalented?

What if she forgets who she is, develops a horrible eating disorder, begins cutting herself and is eventually admitted into a psychiatric ward? What if she gets out and is so horribly unhappy she becomes a fake person to simulate what she thinks everyone around her wants?

Then she’d have been me. Right up to my twenties.

My mom tried to help, desperately, unflinchingly, and ferociously. But the problem for her, for me and maybe for a lot of us is that we get caught up trying to fix the immediate situation. Knock down the room of social expectation or put up scaffolding to support it. We address the problem at hand, not the cause.

We focus on redesigning, renovating, even demolishing the metaphorical home of our child or our self. We forget there is a back room. A non-descript, small space we embarrassingly disregard as needing too much work.

But inside this humble space lives the DNA of our true, essential, loving self.

It cannot be destroyed. Not by the powers of greed, fear, jealousy or longing.

It is the source of our identity, the core of our endless reserve. But it’s not glamorous. Promises nothing in the way of reward or recognition. And requires our time and attention, both of which are severely overtaxed. So, we deny its importance. Push it out of the way in the name of all the things that must get done. Maybe we wink at it from across the room. Make empty promises about stopping by later.

But we don’t. And we don’t. And pretty soon we forget altogether.

Until some concerned friend asks how we are doing, really doing, if we are okay. 

And it seems like it should be so blatantly obvious (I mean who else can answer that question except us)  but I always get a little nervous. Because the truth is, often, I’m not totally sure. We are all running so fast we don’t know if we are okay, or how we are doing – sometimes even where we are going. Like Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy in Oz.

We roll full steam ahead with strength and resilience. But we forget.

The root of courage is coeur or heart.

That’s what’s in that back room. Our heart. Our spirit. Our joie de vivre. Our home.

And we need to go there. To visit frequently, daily if possible. Even for a quick drive-by. Enough to stay connected to this essential self. Enough so that we are not constantly wondering if we’re there yet.

Enough so that, when we get home, we feel welcome home.

But how do we get there? We need access.

We need hallways.

I hate hallways. They always feel like such a waste of space – an inefficient but necessary design flaw in the architecture of home planning. It would be quicker if you could just step from one room to another.

But I have been warming up to them lately. Their ability to connect various parts of our selves to each other. The way they offer the grace of transition from one space to the next. In both our physical home and the space we go inside ourselves.

Sometimes I spend so long in my be a good mom, host a good party, carpool with joy, keep the plants alive, kickbox like an Olympian, offer strategic vision at work, dazzle the world front end rooms I forget I even have a back room.

Until I begin feeling empty, lost, alone or overwhelmed.

Then I remember.

And my hallway back is stillness, quiet and waiting for the universe to give me direction.

I sit quietly until the chatter settles down. I ask my mom or my dad or any other spirits up there, sometimes just my inner wiser self what I need. And then, I wait. Not my forte. Not my usual bossy style.

But I do it because time and time again, I get some image or words. Or a feeling comes to me and sheds light on what I would not have come to on my own. Sometimes it takes a little while. Sometimes my mind wanders and I miss it the first time. But I never give up. Not on this.

And when Joe or the boys have disturbing dreams or feel discombobulated about life, we sit and do it together. And they always get messages because no matter how dark it seems at times, there is always help if we’re willing to believe.

These insights, these gifts – they are the hallway home.