Full-Spectrum Living

The past three months have been rather amazing.  I’m writing again.  I’m taking photographs several times a week, and they’re often rather good.  I’m walking, a lot.  (Just over 100 miles since I set out on my “self-care” walk that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.)  I’m being bold and proactive, meeting people that I’ve wanted to meet for years, making decisions and committing to things where I used to say, “Someday I should.”  I’ve even started learning Spanish, because I suspect that might come in useful when walking across Spain.  In so many ways, I feel more completely alive than I have felt in years, if ever.

Can I be honest with you here?  (I know, it’s a little late to ask that question.)  It’s been incredibly hard.  Yes, there have been moments of near-euphoria, moments of deeply rooted satisfaction.  I know, I know, that I am on the right path.  I’ve moved forward more in the past twelve weeks or so than I had in the decade that preceded them.  And yet… There have also been moments of self-doubt that nearly paralyzed me, days of deep melancholy, times of depression that made me want to crawl under the covers and hide from the world.  Even in the near-perfect moments, I’ve felt the pull of a profound sadness, as certain and inescapable as the gravitational pull of the moon on the tides.

HUH?!?  I know.  It doesn’t make sense.  I am feeling energized, empowered, and creative, even bold… and I’m melancholy?  I’m battling depression?  I’m experiencing self-doubt?  Surely not.  That can’t be right.  Not when there is so much that is right in my life. 

I assure you, I am experiencing all those things, and more.  If you think this is odd, then know that I am right there with you.  I’ve experienced this before.  In fact, I believe I’ve faced this emotional rollercoaster every time I’ve started to fully engage with my creativity.  Every.  Damn.  Time.  In hindsight, I suspect that this has been one of the biggest reasons I’ve pulled back from being creative in the past, if not THE biggest reason.  I create, and it feels good, and yet it also hurts, and I don’t like to hurt, so I quit creating, and I become semi-normal (semi-numb?) again.  For years, I was convinced that it was a defect in my wiring, yet another example of how I wasn’t put together quite right.

Lately, though, I’ve been questioning this thought process, because the thought process itself seems fundamentally flawed.  The basic premise I’d been working under was that I was defective, that there was something wrong with the way I was created.  This, in turn, implies that there is a fundamental flaw in my Creator.  I’ll be honest – no matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to believe that my Creator is flawed, nor can I convince myself that I was created in a random or indifferent manner.  Yes, I am human, and therefore imperfect, but I was also created with intent and purpose.  So, if this is true… then my interpretation of the cause and effect in the relationship between my creativity and my emotional state must be wrong.

Discovering I was wrong used to really tick me off.  Now, it doesn’t bother me as much as it once did.  Much to my surprise, I’ve found that being wrong can be incredibly liberating, especially as it relates to my understanding of my own nature.  Realizing I’m wrong gives me the freedom to reevaluate my assumptions, to change course, to take a new path.  Stubborn as I am, I’m discovering that it is much easier to change myself than to alter the world around me.  Over the past few months, I’ve found that being willing to accept that I have been wrong has given me the power to change.

So, if this emotional rollercoaster that seems to accompany my creative awakening isn’t the result of some internal defect, what is it?

I’m certainly not in a position to speak on this with absolute authority, but here’s what I’ve come to suspect is true:  It is necessary to engage with ALL the components of our emotional selves if we are to create.

It’s been six weeks or so since this thought really started to resonate through my mind, and the effect on my thought processes has been dramatic.  First, I was just unsettled.  For years, I’ve shied away when all these emotions started to wash over me.  They felt… dangerous to my well-being.  It makes sense that I felt this way.  In western society, we’ve developed a mindset that says we can’t be sad, we can’t be discouraged, or feel elation, or joy, or anger.  We have to be STEADY.  Stable.  Reliable.  The thing is, I don’t think shutting ourselves down emotionally is any of these things.  To be blunt, when we close ourselves off to our emotions, we stop living and we succumb to entropy.  As you may recall, I’m not a big fan of entropy.

As I started to accept the idea that all these deep emotions might not be so dangerous, I had to ask the next question.  If these emotions weren’t an “unfortunate side effect” of my reawakening creativity, what were they?  I found that once I’d accepted the possibility that I’d been wrong, the answer came rather easily.  If this hot mess of emotions that was flooding my psyche wasn’t a bad thing, was it possible that it was good?

In a word, yes.  Absolutely.  Without question.  (Okay, that’s four words, but you get my point.)  With growing certainty, I’ve come to accept that the emotions I’ve been experiencing are the natural and healthy energy that comes from giving myself permission to create.  They aren’t a negative factor, they aren’t an unfortunate side effect, they are fuel!  It seems that when I’ve tried to quell this upswelling of emotions in the past, I’ve been choking off the very thing that was enabling me to be creative.  Is it any wonder I’ve had trouble sustaining my creativity?

It’s a good thing I’ve become more comfortable with being wrong.

Now here’s where it gets tricky.  It may seem like I’m saying that to be creative, I’m allowing my emotions to run amuck.  That’s not what I’m saying at all.  I’m also not saying that these emotions don’t have the potential to be dangerous.  As I said, they are fuel.  Fuel is, by it’s very nature, dangerous stuff.  The more potent it is, the more dangerous it is.  To be effective, it has to be contained, and controlled, and used in proper measure.  If you doubt this, take a gallon or two of gasoline, dump it over your car, and light a match.  Suddenly, the very thing that was designed to give your car the power to take you to the next town is the thing that has destroyed your car.  I know, it’s a silly illustration, but I think you understand what I’m trying to say.

Emotions are powerful stuff.  Left unchecked, they can burn through us and leave us in ruins.  But does that mean we shouldn’t let ourselves experience them?  It depends.  Do you want to get anywhere?  If you do want to move forward, then we MUST allow ourselves to utilize this fuel.  To do this, we have to learn how to allow our emotions to flow through us and give us energy, without allowing them to shatter us.  I’m still trying to understand how this works, but I believe that a key component in this process lies in allowing ourselves to become more flexible, to release the rigidity of our thinking.  We have to be willing to redefine our concepts of what is “good,” and of what is “bad.”

We tend to think of emotions as being good or bad.  Happiness, contentment, love, satisfaction and joy get to reside on the “Good” shelf.  Sadness, discontent, anger, frustration, grief, depression, mourning; these all get locked away in the closet, because they’re “Bad.”  I wonder, though:  What if these are neither good or bad?  What if our emotions, the whole lot of them, just… are?  (We’ve explored this basic concept before.  I keep coming back to it, because I think it’s critically important.)  To take it a step further, if our emotions are neither good or bad, why do we work so hard to experience some emotions while avoiding others?

On the surface, the answer seems simple.  Some emotions feel good.  Others really suck.  I LIKE feeling loved, but I’m not so fond of feeling rejected.  Feeling accomplished is wonderful; mourning the death of someone precious to us, not so much.  Yes, I feel confident and rather bold as I sit here and write these words, but I also know what it’s like to be sleepless at 3 AM as anxiety digs its cold claws into my chest and settles on me with all it’s weight.  Like most of you, I’ve spent my life doing my best to experience the things that feel good, while avoiding the things that hurt.

Except… if I’d never experienced the shattering loss when a friend died unexpectedly, I wouldn’t fully appreciate how good it is to spend a day in the company of a close friend.  If I’d never felt rejected and alone, would I know how priceless it is to sit on the couch with my wife, holding her hand and knowing that I’m loved?  I don’t think so.  In fact, I know that I wouldn’t.  It’s those “bad” emotions that give depth and breadth to our experience, that give us the perspective to value the “good” emotions.  If we want to experience life to the full, we have to be willing to experience the full spectrum of the emotions that are built into each of us.

Over the past weeks, I’ve started thinking of this as “Full-Spectrum Living.”  It’s not easy.  In fact, there are days when it sucks, because I really don’t like feeling depressed, or sad, or discouraged.  Here’s what I’ve discovered, though:  Allowing an emotion to flow through me is not the same thing as allowing it to define me.  There is a profound difference between feeling sadness and being a sad person.  I don’t have to dwell in depression, nor should I try to cling to a feeling of elation.  Why?  Because when I cling to any emotional state, I rob it of its energy.

Emotions are meant to be experienced, and they are meant to be cyclical.  It’s another reflection of that same Yin/Yang energy that I’ve written about before.  I’ve discovered that there is tremendous power in the phrase, “This too shall pass.”  If I’m feeling satisfied or joyous or elated, “This too shall pass,” reminds me to savor that moment to the full.  If I’m heartbroken or discouraged or just plain sad, “This too shall pass,” assures me that it is a temporary state, and that the ache is something that will move through me, and then move on.  Here’s the cool part:  As I’ve started testing this theory, I’ve discovered that there is tremendous energy in this tidal flow of emotions.  After a lifetime of fighting the tide, I’m starting to move with it instead, and as I do, I am energized and recharged.

I’m slowly accepting that the carefully controlled “safe” environment I’ve constructed for myself is, in many ways, the very thing that has quelled my creativity.  Wow.  There’s a happy thought!  Like I said, it’s a good thing I’m becoming more comfortable with being wrong.  So here’s what I’m learning to do:  Rather than trying to avoid or diffuse my emotions, I’m allowing them to move through me in their natural cycles, and I’m letting this movement carry me forward.  It’s not some willy-nilly, free-range energy.  It’s something I can influence, and channel.  This doesn’t mean I’ve given myself permission to be an ass.  Instead, I’ve given myself the authority to explore the underlying reasons for all the emotions.  Sometimes, it empowers me to change myself.  If I’m angry, and I ask myself why, sometimes I discover something I can reconstruct and redirect, and my life improves.  Other times, I realize that it’s just the tide, and I let it pass, and my life improves.  Here’s the magical part, though:  Either way, my life improves!  While I’m still in the early stages of this experiment, so far it seems as though it is a genuine win-win scenario.

All this has required me to abandon some long-held beliefs.  As much as I like my life to feel safe and predictable, I’m having to accept that a fulfilling life is not likely to be either safe or predictable.  Even if I have moments that grant me that feeling of security, I have to remember that “This, too, shall pass.”  At one time in the not-too-distant past, that would have terrified me.  Now, I find it strangely reassuring.  Better still, I’m discovering that this unpredictable energy is breathing life and vitality into my creativity.  Yes, the footing is less secure than I might like, but it is SO worth it.

On one of my walks a few weeks back, I came across a sign that read, “Slow – variable trail conditions ahead.”  At first, I took it as a warning:  The road ahead was unpredictable, and it could be dangerous.  After a moment, though, I realized it wasn’t a warning so much as an assurance:  If I am aware, and I accept that the road ahead may change, I can move ahead slowly and make it through.  Somehow, it seemed like a perfect metaphor for this stage of my creative journey.  To me, “variable trail conditions ahead” has become a promise that the journey won’t be dull.

The Journey is the Destination

Here’s a confession for you.  Although I normally write what comes to me, as it comes to me, what I share with you today was actually pre-planned!  I’m just acting out-of-character every chance I get, lately.  For those of you who prefer the normal, more predictable version of me, I apologize.

Dates are important to me, and always have been.  Not just normal dates, like birthdays and anniversaries, but obscure dates, like October 12, 1983.  That’s what I refer to as our “Kissaversary”, the anniversary of the day that I finally got up the nerve to kiss the girl who would become my wife.  When my second granddaughter was born, she thoughtfully arranged to arrive on October 12, so that the day could be doubly significant for me. 

I’m sharing this with you because I want you to appreciate how significant September 22^nd is to me.  Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien know that September 22^nd is the shared birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, the unassuming heroes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  As a seventh grader, I thought this was extremely cool, because September 22^nd was also my birthday.  More often than not, it was also Fair Day at my elementary school and junior high, the day that Albuquerque Public Schools would turn us all loose early to attend the New Mexico State Fair.  I was convinced that this was the universe’s way of confirming that I’d been born on a fortuitous day, sitting precariously atop that magical moment when summer becomes fall.

I turn 55 today.  That hardly seems possible, unless I care to acknowledge the distinctly middle-aged guy that stares back at me from the mirror each day.  On this particular birthday, however, I’m not overly focused on my age, or on what I have or haven’t achieved, or even on what I’m going to have for my birthday dinner tonight.  Instead, my thoughts are not on this birthday, but on where I plan to be on September 22, 2020, two years from now.

While freely acknowledging that plans are fluid, tentative things at best, here’s what I

intend:  On that day, a Tuesday, I will lace up my boots, shoulder my pack, and set out down the cobblestone streets of St. Jean Pied-de-Port in France, taking my first steps down the pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago.  I bought the backpack itself just a few short weeks ago, and I think I know which hat I’ll be wearing.  I wonder if I’ll use my iPod, and if I do, what music will I choose?  I often wonder if I’ll have gathered the courage to shave my head by then, because my scalp has recently decided to embrace the heritage of the Williams side of my family, shedding hair at a rather alarming rate.  Hopefully, I’ll have dropped about 17 pounds by then, which would allow me to carry my fully loaded pack without weighing much more than I do today without a backpack.  I can see where that could be helpful. 

Photo credit - Unknown

I think I focus on questions like that because I can wrap my mind around them, whereas the larger questions are harder for me to grasp.  Much harder.  The biggest question is also the most obvious.  Why? 

It’s worth asking.  Why would I walk five hundred miles or more across northern Spain, to arrive at a church where a saint might be buried?  I’m not Catholic.  I’m not really even a good conservative Protestant.  I’m not a hard-core distance walker.  I’m certainly not an international traveler.  So why, then?

I’m called.  To paraphrase a t-shirt I saw on Pinterest, “The Camino calls, and I must go.”  Over the past few weeks, I’ve wrestled with this answer.  While true, “I’m called” isn’t enough for me.  It feels like an evasion, more than an answer.  I want to know why I’m called.  Maybe I’m a bit weird, (DUH!), but if I’m compelled to do something so out-of-character, I want to understand why.

I’ve tried some standard answers.  I know it will be transformative.  I know it will give me an opportunity to re-assess my values.  It will come as we move into a very different chapter of our lives, and it will help me put these changes in perspective.  Here’s the problem I’ve encountered, though.  While all these statements are true, none of them address the real reason I want to do this.

It’s the journey itself that compels me.

Most people who walk the Camino from St. Jean do so in just over a month.  Many consider a walk of thirty-three days to be the ideal – a day for each year of Christ’s life.  Forty days is also considered a good number, because the number 40 is a favorite in the Bible.  To achieve this, a pilgrim needs to average roughly 25 kilometers, (or 15 miles), every day.  You need to keep your head down, focus on the destination for the day, and just keep walking.

Even before I knew I would be walking the Camino, I knew I wouldn’t walk it in that way.  For me, fully realizing the experience of the Camino requires taking the time to savor it.  For me, it is less about arriving at an ancient cathedral by a specific date, and far more about experiencing the fullness of the journey.  At the risk of sounding like a cliché, I need to be able to stop and smell the flowers, and photograph them, and talk to the old man who’s growing the flowers, and then follow the old man as he takes me to see the tiny family chapel that his great-grandfather built, and, and, and…

If I’m not going to do that, then what’s the point?

Don’t get me wrong – I want to arrive at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compestela, to attend the pilgrim’s mass and see the Botafumeiro, the giant incense burner that they swing through the transept of the great church.  That matters, yes, but no more so than a hundred other moments I will experience along the way.  If it was that final destination that mattered above all, I would start closer, and waste less time getting there.  I certainly wouldn’t consider continuing my walk beyond Santiago de Compestela to Cape Finisterre, once considered to be the literal end of the earth.  (Why would I limit myself to saying, “I walked almost all the way across Spain,” when a mere 90 kilometers more allows me to simply say, “I walked across Spain.”)  I definitely would not acknowledge that I’ll probably keep walking from Finisterre to Muxia, the final point of Tom’s journey in The Way.  And from there?  I don’t know.  To be honest, none of these places are the destination.  Waypoints, maybe, but not the destination.

But then, the journey is always what has captivated me.

Talk about a statement that seems out of character!

You see, a birthday isn’t the only thing I share with Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.  If prior lifetimes are a real thing, then I was probably a hobbit in a past life.  I like my comfortable home, and my favorite chair, and my books, and my comfy slippers, and my coffee cup, and my artwork, and all my beautiful things.  I like to know what’s going to happen next, and I don’t particularly like surprises.  Ask my wife, who most certainly has gypsy blood somewhere in her past, and she’ll tell you – I don’t go on adventures.  That being said, I’ve always dreamed of them.

Some of my earliest memories are of watching Star Trek with my mom.  The original series, before it was canceled.  It captivated me.  I also remember sitting in front of the television, spellbound, watching Neil Armstrong step out onto the moon.  As I grew, so did the list of shows and movies that spoke to something inside me:  Lost in Space, Fantastic Voyage, Space 1999, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, 2001 – A Space Odyssey, and, of course, Star Trek in all its various incarnations.  Books captivated me, as well.  Tolkien, yes, but also the works of Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Alan Dean Foster, Anne McCaffery…  the list was endless.  The back left pocket of my jeans always wore out even faster than the knees, because I always had a book in my pocket.

When I discovered the world of plastic models, I started building models of every spacecraft and starship I could find.  As a teenager, my ceiling was crowded with Constitution-class starships and Klingon battle cruisers, X-wing Fighters and Colonial Vipers, Cylon Raiders and space stations.  Few of those models survived into adulthood, but as I neared 30 the world of “collectible” (translated: over-priced) miniatures started to appear, and I started to replace long-lost plastic models with pre-built diecasts.  To be blunt, it was an obsession.

As I’ve been in this recent phase of self-examination, I’ve found this to an interesting anomaly.  For a story to be particularly interesting to me, it had to be about the people; about their relationships, their flaws, their ways of overcoming challenges.  Without the “human” element, the technology wasn’t that interesting.  And yet, what I have collected are the representations of the vessels from these stories.  It seemed kind of strange.

As it turns out, it really isn’t that strange at all.  A week or so ago, I was contemplating all the miniature starships and other fantastic vehicles on the shelves in my Nerd Cave.  (Yes, I have a Nerd Cave.  Is that really surprising to you?)  In a moment of clarity, I realized why these things matter so much to me.  The U.S.S. Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, the Apollo 11 lunar lander, even the Yellow Submarine – these are what enabled the protagonists to go on their journeys!  In that moment I realized that the common element in all these things was the Journey.  (Yeah, I know.  Duh.)

My love of starships is directly connected to my more recent compulsion to photograph stacked stones along hidden trails.  It’s related to my fascination with signposts and spray-painted yellow arrows, and even with well-worn pairs of hiking boots.  It seems that I have been fascinated by the idea of the Journey, even when I was only four years old.  Hmm.  And it was always, always, more about the journey than about the destination. 

So here I am, turning 55 today, and I’m already planning my 57^th birthday.  I’m trying not to overthink it, because there are SO many obstacles and challenges to work through between today and that day.  If I were to let them, those obstacles could discourage me.  Or… I could recognize that those obstacles are waypoints, too.  Funny, how a simple change in perspective can alter how we perceive the world.

Two days from now, I’ll set out on my most ambitious walk yet, a roughly 10-mile loop that climbs to the top of the ridgelines overlooking Santa Fe.  There’s a lot of UP – the trail climbs 1,555 feet, and then I have to come back down that far, as well.  It will be hard, and yet, I know that this walk represents a fairly easy day on the Camino.  I know a local woman who walked the Camino a few years ago, and she would walk this same trail twice in a day when she was training.  That could be intimidating, but interestingly enough, it’s not.  It’s part of the journey.

I finished writing this last night – or so I thought.  This morning, though, I realized that I had one more thing to say.  “The journey is the destination” isn’t just how I’m approaching my upcoming walk on the Camino.  Over the past few years, this has become my approach to life as a whole, and my life is richer for it.  When I opened my journal to start writing yesterday, I landed on a page written roughly eight and a half years ago.  Curious, I started reading.  As I read through the pages and moved forward in time, I saw times where I had been content, but more often, I was lost and frustrated.  I was acutely aware that I hadn’t “arrived,” that I wasn’t achieving ill-defined goals.  In hindsight, I think I was missing the point.

My focus has shifted since that time.  I tend to be far more aware of the present moment now, to notice it and savor it.  Although there are days where I slip back into old habits, they are the exception now, not the rule.  Here’s what I find fascinating about this:  In letting go of my obsession with “arriving,” and learning to enjoy the journey itself, my vision of where I am going has become infinitely clearer.  I’m still not sure why that is, but it’s pretty darn cool.