I don't know what I am doing most of the time. This has always been true. I am not really great at anything obvious. This is not self-degradation, it's just honest. I watch the Olympics and Miss America pageants wondering where these people find all their energy. I watch the moms I meet in my community make their own organic baby food, sew cloth diapers with love in every stitch and parent as if a six figure salary depended on it. I am lucky if my laundry is done and most of the time my floor needs to be swept. Too often I just want to watch TV.
It's cool. Good for those athletes and aspiring princesses and CEO moms. It's just not my thing. I stopped working a year ago to take care of my first child. In the following hours and minutes that spawned boredom and a lifetime of self-doubt I have been asking myself this question, "what exactly is my thing?" I am not lazy. I like all the normal things to people tend to like... music, reading, art, camping, fashion, my family. So what? What makes life worth getting out of bed for? I am a Christian, and other Christians say I should read about purpose filled lives and jazz that is blue and velvet elvises. Good stuff. They tell me I should "live for the glory of God". But I really don't know what the hell that means.
In "Franny and Zooey", JD Salinger confronts a quarter life-crisis head on. In order to inspire his sister (Franny) to come back to the land of the living, her brother (Zooey) says the following...
...I'll tell you a terrible secret-Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady...There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that g-damn secret yet? And don't you know-listen to me, now-don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself , buddy.
When I first read this passage in Franny and Zooey in my early 20's I thought I had found the secret to an inspired life. Well I have learned a lot through the years about idealism, but I find that in my mid-thirties it still has a powerful affect on me. It is not a new concept to find the "divine spark" in humanity-but Salinger seems to put a spin on it. He seems to imply that your life is your art, and that Christ is always there- in a friend, a homeless man, a rude neighbor- watching whether or not you are squandering your joy and creativity.
St. Irenaeus says that"the glory of God is man fully alive." Jesus says that He came to give life abundantly. Well, I think that's my thing. To live my life with art, abundance, love- to be fully alive. Honestly, that is as far as I have gotten. I am hoping to figure how to live with "art" amidst a naughty Weimaraner, the imperfect church, a gorgeous baby girl and another on the way.
I know it won't be easy. It is so much easier to be depressed and detached. It really is. I am beginning to think that being depressed (chemical and hormonal deficiencies aside) is lazy. At least, it is for me. It's not making the effort to be engaged, not forgiving life for not living up to my expectations. How self-absorbed is that? So, I'll get out of bed every morning for the Fat Lady- and see how it goes.
