calling

"Your calling is the point at which life's greatest need and your heart's deepest joy intersect." -- some writer whose name I can't remember

Something I read a while ago that gave me hope.  For its practical take on a concept as nebulous as a "calling", which some of us would like to perceive as an element in life's flow despite a need for strong pragmatic and empirical threads to be woven into our metaphysics.  The line is also attractive for the recognition it gives to the heart.  For me, such considerations put the idea neatly between the two seeker's poles of "save the world" and "follow your bliss" -- positions held respectively, in my head, by the Socialist ex and all of those Santa Fe women.  While those two voices seem to have some degree of permanent residence in my mental programming, I've let them know that they have their place: at the margins.  They taught me with their extremes, but intention's center is now reserved for balance, and for interconnection.

The line came back to me at a welcome moment this week, as I started to wonder (not, of course, for the first time) what in the world I was doing heading to Mexico to learn how to teach English.  It's a sharp turn of a trajectory that in the last few years was moving steadily toward farming, and barter, and all things tangible and earthy and simple.  I haven't been a full-time student in over 20 years.  I'm apprehensive about the move for what I know (the training course will be a serious challenge) and for what I don't (most of what happens afterward).  The whole idea, even though I've imagined it for years, would fit that old disclaimer, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."  That time being the moment, two months ago, when a surgery seven years in the waiting (see: no healthcare, misdiagnosis, survival mode) suddenly returned a huge dividend of energy, optimism, and longer perspective.  This in turn began to defeat the insidious long-term insomnia that was the result of too many layers of physical and emotional stress (see:  an abusive relationship, economic precarity, driving for a living and the compounding effect of insomnia itself).  The resulting sudden boost to strength and outlook was, as I've told several friends, quite a bit like winning the lottery.  Going for the ESL certificate, as a new travel adventure and a career change long overdue, is how I decided to spend the jackpot.

But my own decision is also a surprise, for the timing.  Of all points at which it's seemed appropriate, or at least justified, to drop everything and hit the road, this surely isn't such a time.  Very belatedly I've discovered, in the last few months, how profoundly essential are some of the simplest daily realities many people take for granted.  Recognitions which my life's chaos and transition had never really allowed the chance to catch on.   Continuity in daily routine.  Enough sleep to feel sane and competent.  A homespace that feels safe.  Housemates that treat me with respect and kindness.  Economic stability (for the first time in several years).  A vibrant network of friends and community groups.  That familiarity with a place which, in the past, nearly always bred contempt, but now inspires a bemused loyalty to what I never meant to call home, a noisy city in the drought-ridden desert.

Really, if heart's desire alone got to call the shots at this point, I'd be heading for the hills.  A landscape with mountains and rivers and space and silence is what I always longed for home to be.  There was a moment, just after the credit union approved the loan to cover course and travel expenses, when I thought to take the money and run.  To Colorado, green dreamscape of so many younger years.  Or maybe to Taos, whose luminous skies and liminal mountain-mesa poise have so attracted my attention of late.  Find that little cabin on the land, slow way down, get on Earth-time.  Maybe start writing more.  But that route leaves unanswered the question (after the loan runs out, anyway) of how to make a living.  As well as the deeper query to which a word like "calling" speaks:  how can I make my living on this earth feel at all worthwhile?  It's not enough to be the hermit in the mountains anymore.  Not with the earth returning us the early-stage cancers of all the toxins we've force-fed it, and humankind hemorraging justice and crying out for dignity as they are. The life-current in me is electrified by the increasingly forceful impulses of the world's great need.  It's no longer enough just to keep myself well.  Not that it ever has been.  I've wrestled this question almost all my life.  But the last half-year's events have finally offered the means by which to live my conscience instead of just to keep my head above water, so it's time to move in that direction.

I'm not exactly sure how teaching English will meet the larger existential challenge.  As I wrote in the application essay, I'd like to imagine it feeding into greater economic justice for people in Mexico.  Perhaps even into the immigration dilemma, by equipping some to find sustainable work where they already live.  It will surely engage the heart's desire for communication, understanding, and mutual learning about the human experience.   It'll feed the mind too.  And it's an emotionally safer venture than farming would be at this point.  While socially conscious farmers might well be the world's greatest need at this point, or at least in the top five, that's not a vocation for the faint of heart.  The psychic toll of keeping even a little abreast of Monsanto's actions, and the empathetic perspective gained from watching the struggles (both practical and political) of several farmer friends both here and in Mexico, have shown me that -- at this point anyway -- I just haven't got what it takes.

At the essential level, this venture might be a first-stage action analogous to the launch of a space probe (if I remember correctly what I've read on the subject):  that initial shot towards the sun -- obviously not its destination -- which catapults the vessel into the stronger gravities needed to liberate it from home base and send it on its way outward into the galaxy.  This year seems to send the clear mandate for a dramatic change of course.  I need to vault myself out of my present orbit, into a space where new possibilities are visible.  Whether this is a voyage into a calling, or only another step in getting free, time will have to tell.  Time and need and heart.