Moving On

In “The Power of Myth” , 1991 Joseph Cambell says: 

“ People says that what we’re all seeking a meaning for life. I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive”.. 

In 2019 I retired from 38 years in the public school sectors of Alabama and Georgia. Now I find myself moving beyond that which I fully engaged in 191 days each year and planned for most summers.  I loved teaching! I loved the kids, the classes, the other teachers and staff, and the buildings.

Teaching was not and has never been the sum of my life although I still continue  to teach online at the University level. And I have new interests and time to pursue them. Life will continue to hit me with milestones, and hurdles, joy and sorrow, longing and disallusionment.

 There isn’t a job out there that pays enough money or provides enough satisfaction to remove any of us from the journey we are each born to walk. Because it is in walking that journey that we save ourselves from a meaningless life. It is often in those places that change us  that we find a turn; a new purpose; the next step.

Things we encounter  have value in the meaning they give us for our journey.. That meaning looks completely different in all of us. Where we go inside of ourselves so that we can see out again is as unique as the etchings and dust and remnants of pockets and purses that they have traveled in. The question will remains: Can we step into the change?

~Lydia Patrick