Meditation thoughts
I did a meditation and this nice man told me to think about a problem: easy enough, work. My work environment is…. how do you say… difficult? I might have hung up on my boss last week and landed my smart ass in a meeting with HR. So my employment status is TBD at best and my reputation is pretty align with my desire to be a slug.
Then he asked what would the problem look like if it played out in the best possible way? My knee jerk reaction was to roll my eyes, even though they were closed. If I knew what I wanted, I would not be asking the internet to parent me. But then I forced myself to think again - I want to work. I like being a lawyer, and I’m good at it. I could do with less penile measuring and more collaboration, but that’s a topic for another time.
But I’m also not ready to give up on this spark. I feel alive for the first time since I’m not sure when. I feel like my inner being is climbing out of her she shed and picking out a fabulous dress because that b**ch needs an adventure. And maybe finding myself means leaving everything behind to do something that makes me feel… well, like me. The me who doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. The girl who graduated law school and became a lawyer purely because one person told her she wouldn’t be able to. The girl who played the harp with gusto, regardless of the fact that it was surprisingly not as cool as it seems. The girl who swam long distance because it required the kind of strength she was build with: sturdy and undeterred. The girl who believed she was unstoppable.
So then the man spoke up again (I was startled too, I had forgotten all about him). He told me to just breathe. Another internal eye roll. But then he said, feel what the answer to your problem is. And I knew what he meant. The thought of writing and how it helped my healing, creating, traveling, ADVENTURE, the green hills of Ireland; those thoughts make my heart feel warm. The thought of working as a lawyer, writing nuanced arguments and occasionally calling someone stupid by way of big words (ludicrous and unintelligible are a couple of my favorites); that ALSO makes my heart warm. So the question is, can I do both?
Working as a lawyer in my world, is safe - it provides financial security and makes me feel like I have some worth. But I’m just not sure how to handle the rest of the job, like all of the people. I don’t LOVE interacting with people, it makes me sweaty and nervous and my heart gallops and my words NEVER come out right. I overshare in an attempt to make people like me and overall, I rate peopling as a 1/10. Zero out of five stars, don’t do it.
But the writing? Digging into an argument and using the nuances of words persuasively, thrills me. Looking at a final product on a dispute that you got bogged down with, but eventually fought through, is pride. It makes me feel like a lioness baring her teeth. Some people say lawyers like to win and that’s true. But my wins are with the words, not in the courtroom. When I can conquer an argument and use the text to bend an opinion to my will, that is when I win. What happens after is pomp and circumstance to me.
Glennon Doyle talks about the Jewish word “selah” in her book Untamed. Which I’m finally reading a year after my therapist told me to. I think I mentioned I was stubborn… she says that when noted in text, scholars believe that it is a sign to stop reading and reflect; that the previous idea was so important it is worthy of an entire word dedicated to commanding people to stop and think about it. I wish we had a selah for normal everyday things. I feel like people spew so much and never stop to think about why and what we are spewing (says the girl projectile word vomiting all over the internet). But I wish I had a way of saying hey, this is important to me, please take the time to stop and engage. “Listen up f***ers” seems a bit too intense, and “I need you to listen to me” doesn’t seem emphatic enough. I’m sure the answer is somewhere in between, as with most things, but until I find it I just feel like I am speaking a foreign language no one else understands.