Is life about different kinds of marriages - to people, jobs, landscapes, hobbies? The determined fellow portrayed looks stuck.
What is it that we marry in others, author Michael Ventura asks. He describes it as "a process that goes on while we manage to earn a living, go to the m0ives, watch television, go to the doctors, walk on the Palisades, drive to Texas, follow the election, try to stop drinking, eat too much Haagen-Dazs."
Is this the whirlwind of your caregiving life? Do you live under the commands of the moment or dance circling a still point?
We imagine balance. Yes, hope is the answer. Depressed people never think, "I feel so hopeful." So hopeful generalizations crush nuance and never dent suicide's trends.
My passionate journey down wildly diverse paths looks whimsical. My current travels generate as much depression as joy as I flail for meaning beyond simplistic advice.
My best still point is a salvific, God-centered, imperative: Whatever I do must serve others.
This is so lofty I am often lost, floating amongst the Palisades, running to the cliff's edge, screaming into the void, and stopping to eat too much Graters.
Does approaching journey's end force setting priorities in our cathedral? OR, can even caregivers release goals, sit in center of the chapel and watch the dance? I have visited the mediation room but have never stayed. It is not a thing you "do."
What is it like to be? Can we be and do in a new marriage where the still point dances?
-Erie Chapman
Portrait, "Erie at Parthenon" Minton Sparks, 2019
