Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason,
you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing
a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a
reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that
sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past
trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s
when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here
on earth, again and again.
Cutting Loose by William Stafford
Last week I had occasion to visit the secretary of my village’s Mayor, mairie. On a table set against an old blackboard sat two enormous leather and canvas bound volumes of cadastral plans for the commune I live in. I asked the secretary if I could see the oldest, which was created in 1823 after Napoléon redrew Ancien Régime, 1st French Empire, maps. She opened the book and we discovered that my property had originally been named Lorbeyx, (pronounced lorbays) and was originally part of the Spanish Basque country, while it’s present name Aux Arbeils, (pronounced auz arbays) is in the Gers départment of France. In rural areas it was and still is, impossible for houses to be numbered, so they are named. For the rest of the day I thought about how amazing it was that I had taken a road with so many ups and downs to find this home in the southwest of France.
When we plan a road trip we often read guidebooks and study maps in an effort to better understand where we’re going, but our lives don’t come with guidebooks or maps. How do we know, then, what road to take? Sometimes we turn to the past experiences of other people which offer inspiring stories of adventure–religious, spiritual or otherwise. From Odysseus to Harry Potter those experiences are theirs, not ours. I believe the road we choose to take should, ultimately, be up to us. When we follow our inner roadmaps, listen to and trust deeply in our intuitions, we can boldly navigate the unforeseeable detours of life, thus finding the courage to dream.
I know quite a few people who feel that something is missing in their lives, and waste energy wistfully regretting the choices they’ve made, endlessly pondering whether they’re on the right road or the wrong road, instead of surrendering to the road they’re on. LIfe is too short for us not to be the dreamers of our own lives. To know how to choose a dream is to learn how to listen to the singing of one’s heart.
“It’s not true that people stop pursuing their dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
