Engaging the World--the Terror of Freedom

The previous essay ended with the thought that when I left my BLF ("big law firm") job at the end of January 2003 I was finally able to "hear the voices" of the alluring music which would call me to my delicious and delightful destiny. Instead of spending my time trying to fill the desires of others, I would be able to try to "listen to" myself. In many ways I can say that, four and one-half years later, I have never been happier in my life. But heeding the call of the inner/Siren voice has not been without its pitfalls--big pitfalls.

After I wrote the previous essay, in which I made that little voice sound so alluring, I decided to go back and read my diary from those days, just to see if I had correctly captured all of my feelings. Certainly the marvelous anticipation of freedom was there, but I had conveniently forgotten the following, from November 2002 (when I knew I was going to leave my job) and from February 2003. First, from volume 11 of my 8 1/2" X 11'' personal notebooks, is the entry from November 10, 2002:

"I am filled with terror this Sunday evening. Within 8 weeks I will not be receiving a paycheck. I will be located in Salem--Salem alone [my firm was in Portland]. I will have time. I will have nothing facing me but the world itself. The world neither wants me nor knows about me. It is going on, oblivious to my existence. And I don't even know how to sit here this evening. Discursive thought has left me. Wild images of possible futures crowd into my mind, each more improbable than the last, each one with only a glimpse of hope attending it, and then full darkness. Maybe a stint in the new Governor's office, though he has probably chosen his people...I know if I think about things long enough I will not be able to emerge from darkness. Thought gives me no avenue. And, my heart is largely dead. I want to take everything that touches me and look at it as if I am a third party, reflecting on it. So my thinking gets me nowhere and my heart is dead. But shards of my heart remain, as I feel it being tugged and tugged.

The words that you no doubt saw, "and my heart is largely dead," will come in for comment in the fourth essay. So, you see that when I had decided to "take the plunge" because of the gentle voices, I was anything but fully confident. Then, from February 21, 2003:

"I feel a huge wave of psychic pain this morning. I think it relates, most of all, to the knowledge that in order to get myself "up and running" in yet this fifth career (Biblical studies, pastorate, teach history, litigation attorney, teach law), I need to build the foundations again. I need to clear out overgrowth, learn the ways to get to my place, set up with fresh people, identify new tasks and then actually complete them. It would have been so much easier for me had I chosen a simple life.... It would have been so much simpler had I identified a limited range of "my" material and become comfortable with it, published it, spoke on it and built my life off of it [here I was thinking of friends who got their Ph. D.'s in Biblical Studies and spent the rest of their lives circling around Paul or Jesus and that was about it]...But, for whatever reason, I become restless with things; I want to explore new ideas; I do so in a way that pursues my own [rather than my employer's] agenda and interests. I go in a counter-cultural direction and I don't permit the things of the culture to have much effect on me...The psychic cost is enormous. The life that one "should" lead is that by age 40 or 45 one has "mastered" [a field]: one knows how to handle the questions that come one's way; one therefore can go through life rather effortlessly or on automatic pilot. Once can discoer a new array of interests; one can have a second life. And, one can gradually create more psychic space each year [I noted that this was what several of my friends and acquaintances, who stayed in their one field, had done]. One is secure financially, the business sometimes "runs itself," one discusses more and has broader policy interests, etc. Life opens and age 50 becomes much more pleasant than age 30. A huge psychic space is thereby created, where the heart may be cultivated and where expertise in at least one area of life gives security and identity...."

Well, you get the picture now. Though on my "better" days, and there were far more good than bad days after January 30, 2003, I would celebrate the freedom of investigation and the allure of the Siren call to me, on my "other" days I would be as I described above. The constancy for which I longed, and which I probably incorrectly projected onto others, eluded me. I was 50 years old, and I was just beginning--again.

The Joy of Discovery

That person would be mistaken who thinks that heeding the call of the inner music leads to clarity before it leads to confusion. I sometimes think that our energy level is so high (i.e., we get "psyched") when we make a major life change like this because God or the Universe knows that it will take all of that energy to wend our way through the bewildering path ahead. As you know, I am not speaking here simply about "changing jobs at 50." I am talking about leaving a lucrative, but stifling, law practice for teaching one course that paid me $4,500 for three months. In one diary entry I calculated that with other money I had saved, I could buy myself four months of relative freedom by making this choice--freedom until I had to find something else. It is now 4 1/2 years later, and I still am heeding the Siren--I have never needed to get another job (As it turned out, the law school ended up hiring me to teach two, and then three, and then four courses a year until the end of 2006. I could live on the salary, and I still had loads of time for my own thinking).

My major point, however, is that even though my heart was ready for "freedom exploration" early in 2003 and that I was hearing the "music," it took quite a bit of effort to identify the particular path that was good for me. Fits and starts characterized my life for most of 2003 but I believed that if I just gave myself a little more time, my task would emerge and then my heart and my task would unite. I was, in the language of the Scripture, going by faith and not by sight. I was flying by instruments in some pretty foggy country. The next essay will describe how discovery for me gradually became a true joy--and how I encountered one other problem that I never thought I would--in this "new life."

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