This is who I am: a 5-year plan at 74 becomes a 5-year Question (part 3)

Peace of Wild Things

Yesterday, it was suddenly clear. 

 

Questions. 

I don’t want a 5-year plan. I want a 5-year question.

I wanted a question that would be a living energy, constantly refocusing me on what I want my life to be and who I want to be.

You, dear reader, might be one of the many saying, 

“At 74 you don’t know?” 

 

And, I would have to say yes. 

I have clues. 

I have shadow shapes flitting about just out of sight.

Basically though, I’m just going along, taking things as they come.

Now, I’m ready to claim the rest of my life for myself:

Be who I am; serve the world in my own way,

Truly live my “one wild and precious life.” 

(With eternal gratitude to Mary Oliver.)

Yesterday ended with a question that I thought was close but no cigar. 

 

And where, pray tell, did that old saw about cigars come from?

Apparently in the 1900s, fairground stalls gave out cigars as prizes. 

People who failed to win prizes would be told:

Close, but no cigar.”

But, I digress. Here was the question that ended yesterday:

What do I want in my life and who do I have to be in order to create that life?

Good question but dead. Flat. Boring. That question sparked no reaction, so I signed off and turned to other things.

This morning dawned with one word: Delight. And, it delighted me, especially when I discovered the word play: de light. That’s what I wanted: to live in the light, be filled with light, to be guided by a beacon of light. To be deLighted.

I had been using the words bliss and joy … truly great words but they were not igniting my energy … suddenly with this word, it was like the light went on. Duh.

Before I went searching for a magical question, I had made a list of qualities I wanted in my life … an exercise most of us with any years behind us have done more than once. Apparently though, it’s one of those exercises that constantly change and is never done and finished. The seven qualities I listed, with no sense of priority, were:

Bliss … now changed to Delight

Relationship … now changed to Friendship

Accomplishment

Connection

Abundance

Inspiration

Adventure

For each of these, I wrote a rather typical affirmation, and, then, following the thought that had intrigued me earlier in this journey, I also wrote a question designed to lead me forward and assume that I already have these qualities. I’m now calling them affirming questions. Here is an example:

    Delight: I am a lean, strong, hiking photographer always finding beauty and  being filled with abundant delight and joy.

??? Why am I always healthy, strong, and lean, able to hike through beauty and be filled with inner delight and joy as I capture the world around me with my camera?

Writing these affirming questions, pulled me toward the answer:  

Because, this is who I am! 

The first time I said those words, I could feel their power surge through my body. They made me feel taller, walk straighter. I recorded the series of affirmations and affirming questions and began to listen to and repeat them on my walks.

So, all of this … finally! … leads me to my 5-year defining question (one that defines and pulls me toward where I want to be):

How can I live my life in delight?

Now, it's time to go back to doing. What do I do on this journey toward delight? 

After lengthy contemplation, I was delighted (!) when that answer came in four simple words which I think tie my entire life and being together. I don’t have to run a marathon, publish another book, show my art work in a gallery, or try to be Mother Theresa. If any or all of those things happen, that’s fine, but they aren’t critical to what will bring me closer to a life lived in delight. 

 

The four actions that are critical … for me … which could be considered my Action Model are:

Learn - Create - Connect - Share

The Test: To be useful, a 5-year plan (or question) should provide a guide through the challenges of life both big and small. Should I take this job or that? Should I read a murder mystery or organize my photos? Should I join the kids for movie night or avoid going out into the world in a time of pandemic? 

 

If we’ve crafted our defining question well, the answer should be clear … of course, we still have choice and, perhaps, we decide not to lean into the question for whatever reasons. However, we know we’ve deliberately made a choice and we can see what consequences are triggered by it.

With all of that in mind, I decide to test recent actions against this defining question and action model. What should I be doing about the state of the world, especially the political world in the United States? Should I pull away from social media?

My current action is to spend a significant amount of time on Twitter and Facebook, reading widely, supporting favored candidates, and donating modestly. 

What brings me delight in this process? stories of generosity and heroism, feeling more connected to the world, sharing the collective heartbreak and determination to live through an uncertain time, being part of the resistance to evil and greed, learning more about the world, creating art from my own experience and feelings.

What takes me out of delight? Seeing widespread fear and uncertainty being played out as hatred and divisiveness. Falling into the pattern myself of not being rational and kind. 

With this challenge at least, I think the process serves me. 

 

Please stay well and feed your spirit.

 

And, if you would like to see my ongoing "journal" about this time, Corona Curiosity is now in magazine format:  Click Here

 

 

This is who I am: a 5-year plan at 74? While in a pandemic? (part 2)

Turn my ship around

March 31, 2020 - 
part 2

And then, came a virus with a vengeance. You could hear doors slamming shut all across the planet. Lockdown. 

Sudden change left our heads spinning and our hearts softened as we marched to war … the peoples of the earth fighting against something we couldn’t even see.

Uncertainty. Not knowing what’s coming our way is changing us, turning us back toward the basics, stripping away norms built up over the years of prosperity and gluttony … eating too much, buying too much, self-indulging too much. It’s like we have been sent to our rooms to contemplate our futures and think about what’s important.

My thoughts about a 5-year plan were caught on the edge of this tectonic shift. A plan implies that there is an X in the future that we want  to arrive at or achieve. How can you plan for an X five years into the future, when you’re not even sure there is a future or what it might look like? 

However, what we do now counts … it will create our future and who we become regardless of whether we’re in good times or in a totally disorienting pandemic. We can’t wait for calm waters to figure out how to handle our lifeboat in the middle of a raging sea.

The word plan doesn’t quite fit this during corona (DC) time. However, what should we call a set of possible actions or intentions chosen to take us to a different state of being? Thesaurus and I had a long discussion about words: pattern, picture, guideline? Nothing quite worked until I started asking questions:  

Who am I? 

Who do I want to be? 

What’s important to me? 

What are my gifts? 

What can I give? 

What do I want my days to be like? 

How do I want to spend my time?

Suddenly, it was clear. QUESTIONS. 

I don’t want a 5-year plan. 

I want a 5-year question.

Whereas a plan is a fixed, step-by-step set of actions focused on an outcome; a question would be a living energy constantly refocusing me on my “one wild and precious life” and what I want it to be.

Plans take  you to places the world recognizes as good: fame, fortune, accomplishment, recognition, a book published, a piece of artwork sold, a new title and bigger office, a spiffy car, an island hideaway, a marathon record, more followers on twitter. A question circles around our essence, inviting new layers into action, calling forth intentions that resonate with who we are, asking:

Assuming there is a future, 

who do you want that future self to be?

Then, the logical me kicks into gear and asks: how will you measure success?  What will be on your “to do” list? How will you know you’re making progress? How will you manage your time? How will the world know that you’re a good and successful person?

My head spins again as an old tune begins to play … “What’s it all about, Alfie?” 

Is it “doing” or “being”? I know that’s the wrong question. As always, it’s both/and. We are living beings who do things. What we do is either a reflection of who we are, who we want to be, or a negation of that standard. If I know who I want to be, I can judge all my actions based on that criteria, asking: Is this action a reflection of who I want to be?

Searching for my 5-year question, I write: 

What do I want in my life and who do I have to be in order to create that life?

It sounds good, but I’m not sure it’s THE question. see part 3

This is who I am: a 5-year plan at 74?

Written late February, 2020, a time we now call BC (before coronavirus):

The first three decades of my life were spent as a chameleon. I worked hard at being invisible, turning whatever color someone wanted me to be. You want cheerful; I’m cheerful. You want responsible; I’m responsible. You want flexible; I’m a yoga master bending to your whims.

That life strategy gradually cracked, but it wasn’t until my 50s when it split open like a ripe watermelon in a hot Kansas field. Poetry, certifiably bad poetry, spewed forth; grade school imagery showed up in art workshops, and “creativity,” a word I don’t remember hearing as a child, took hold of my spirit as I started teaching people how to free their thinking and imaginations. I believed and taught that everyone was creative, while the voice in the back of my head reminded me that I was the one true exception.

All of this is to say that I have been a late bloomer. A recent conversation with a friend about my 18 year-old granddaughter raised the issue of 5-year plans. I’ve had a fairly productive life so my friend was surprised when I told her I had never made a 5-year plan. I guess it surprised me also because the conversation kept haunting me.

In my 20s and 30s, I read most of the popular positive thinking books. I wrote affirmations and filled my mind with possibilities. I visualized wealth and fabulous homes on distant islands. I pasted the title of one of my books on the NY Times best seller list and made vision boards. My efforts were always short-lived and, obviously, those fantasies never materialized.

Gradually, I determined to become visible. I began to blog, post art on FB, spew my thoughts on Twitter and occasionally tiptoe into Instagram and Pinterest. Apparently I'm trying to make up for those years when I was that mousy girl in the corner with her nose in a book. The metaphor may be inept but I basically crept out of the closet and said “take me or leave me, this is who I am.”

So, here I am at 74, thinking about 5-year plans. Who makes 5-year plans at this stage of life when the standard joke is that we don’t even buy green bananas? 

However, turning the coin over, the question becomes: why don’t we ALL make 5-year plans at age 74 … or 84 … or even 94??? Who cares if we die before we reach the end of the plan? If our spirits are still reaching for joy, still learning more about ourselves and the world around us, still finding new ways to share our being with others, then wouldn’t that be a good thing?

So I flung myself into the 5-year plan idea, doing it my way, of course. Fame and fortune no longer interest me, so no more cars and boats and planes in my plan. The only thing that truly interests me these days is deep connection … with friends and family, with myself and the world around me, with the mysteries of the Universe. 

I began to develop a plan to become more who I am, more visible, more generous with my gifts, more attuned to the Universe. I reviewed the new literature on making changes and establishing new habits and found a model that resonated with me. Rather than starting with specific (or even SMART) goals or new processes, this theory advocates starting with identity. Who do I want to be?

As I began my contemplation on who I wanted to be, suddenly there came a virus with a vengeance … see part 2