Advice?

Bella came back and commented on that Choices post (the one that was generated from her comment about my advice to my 20 year old self).  As sometimes happens in this medium, I misunderstood some of what she was asking, and so she clarifies --

Ahh you misunderstand me, my fault. I am divorced and have had a white picket fence. Not what I am looking for. I married a musician, and then a Master, and had houses and children. Now 17 years old. I am not looking to live my life over, just wondering about my future. I don't know guess i want some advice.

I feel bad about that, actually.  I think I can hear the desperate wanting in that "guess I want some advice," and I am afraid that I (and we) are likely to disappoint.  I have no advice.  We don't give advice here.  We are just people, living our lives, and we continue to insist that we are not "gurus." There are bloggers who DO that, but not us.

It is one of the inherent risks of writing this sort of ongoing personal journal.  People read here, sometimes for awhile, and come to see us as larger than life, worthy of imitation, wiser than we will ever likely be.  When a person stumbles across this place, depending on what is going on in the moment, I suppose it is possible to assume that we "have it all together," and "know what we are doing."  That is very much an illusion.  On another day, another reader might find us mired in conflict and misery and confusion, and conclude that we are just a pure mess.  Neither assessment is accurate. 

We are, for all that we live a uniquely configured life, pretty much just like the people you might know in your day to day life -- your neighbors, co-workers, friends.  We have joys and sorrows, triumphs and challenges, moments of angst and times of high humor.  We are human beings with human faults and failings. 

We describe some of our life in this place.  But... not all of it.  There are things we do not share, for a variety of reasons.  Some of it is boring.  Other parts of it are tender and too sensitive for us to lay in front of the eyes of strangers.  Sometimes, it is just too embarrasing to lay out on these pages.  Occasionally, whatever it is, we don't manage to find the words that will make it live on these pages.  No one should ever assume, having read bits and pieces here, that they actually know what we are about.  It is impossible.

So, no advice for Bella or for anyone else.  All we really have to offer is the possibility of acquaintanceship, companionship, and sometimes even friendship. 

As for that question that Bella asks so plaintitively:  "I am not looking to live my life over, just wondering about my future," it is hard to know what to say.  The future is as opaque to me as it is to anyone else.  I generally try to remind myself that it (the future) really doesn't exist yet -- except in my imagination.  I think; I hope; that I have some measure of control in creating the future that lies ahead of me, but I don't know for sure.  I know, looking back along the path I've traveled to this point, that as desperate and hopeless as I felt at 35 (Bella's age), no one could have convinced me that there was any sort of joy and happiness out ahead of me.  I felt stuck, trapped, defined by all the choices I'd made -- and I was sure that there was no hope for anything to ever get better.  I could not see, from that long ago place in my life, this future.  I dreamed it, but I never really believed it could happen for me.  I was too busy trying to keep myself and my children afloat on a sea of trouble to enact even the smallest part of "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams..."  So.  No advice.  Perhaps only this bit of hard earned wisdom -- today is only today; it is not a prediction.  The future can hold all the dreams that you can dream.  There is no cost to imagining, dreaming, hoping, and planning.  And it is really true that doing those things makes the path to the life we imagine. 

swan