Answering the Call
When the cure becomes a poison, it's time to go.
Thanks to everyone for your patience during my rather long, unannounced hiatus. As you’ll see in this entry, a lot has happened. This post is more of a life-update; If you’re not interested in the details of our move, then you can skip down to the 3rd paragraph after the picture of the moving truck ;)
Definitely looking forward to posting more regularly now.
I ...
I feel ...
Feel Like
I am ...
In a burning building, and I gotta go.
- Laurie Anderson, "Let X=X"
A lot has happened since my last entry, but just about all of it has been around relocation, recentering, and aligning with a Higher calling.
I have relocated to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was a big decision, but it wasn’t a difficult one. Life in our small mountain town in Colorado had become heavy and depressing. Despite the beauty and solitude of the mountains, which once felt so supportive and healing, my mood had become increasingly grim. It felt like I was looking at everything through sunglasses that were too dark. Everything seemed muted and washed out. The more effort I put into things that had meaning for me, the more they seemed to be breaking down. It was a stark lesson in unsustainability.
This is nothing against Colorado, the town in which we lived, or the people to whom we had grown close. It wasn’t just us feeling like we had outgrown it, it seemed more like the place was actively trying to push us out. Twenty-one years ago we went there for jobs and basically to heal in ways we didn’t know we needed. But, as is so often the case, the cure can become a poison.
Cape Cod always held a soft spot in my heart. My family and I vacationed here for years when I was a child, and eventually I took my spouse here and she fell in love with it as well. The last time we visited, I had an experience during a visit to Gray’s Beach in Yarmouth. It was a pull, with an intense “there are things you need to do here” energy to it. Every visit before and after made us feel like we belonged. The rhythms of the place, the attitude of the people, the atmosphere; all of it felt like home in ways that Colorado didn’t.
Then everything started to fall into place in ways that I can’t explain. Initially, we thought the move would happen in “maybe five-to-seven years.” But circumstances lined up that kept accelerating the timeline. Five-to-seven years became two-to-three. Then a discussion with our financial advisor turned two-to-three years into “this year.” The circumstances and coincidences were uncanny and undeniable. Even though it was excruciating at times, I leaned into it.
Each step forward seemed to compound our speed and momentum. Our house sold in half the time it would normally take, even though things were shifting toward a buyer’s market. We thought we’d be moving at the end of May, but instead we found ourselves accepting an offer and planning to move at the end of April. We scrambled. The rest was a blur. I think the universe was priming us to re-sync with our faster, native energy of the east coast.
Houses on the Cape sell very quickly. We saw a few that we liked while we were in Colorado prepping for our move, but those houses would move from “for sale” to “pending” within days. There was no way for us to seriously shop for houses while we were in Colorado. After much deliberation, we chose to put all our effort into packing up and selling our house, and reluctantly decided that it made more sense to move to MA and stay with my parents while we shopped for houses. They had the space. We’d have our own room and bathroom. I set up a workstation for my spouse in our room, and I had a semi-private space where I could work. It’s been doable. I’ll have more about temporarily living with my parents again at age 54 in another entry.
The move itself was challenging and tested our limits. We were packing right up until the movers arrived. We closed on the 24th of April, and were on the road to MA in a small car filled with stuff and a dog who hates traveling (but thankfully was prescribed Trazadone by our vet to keep her calm). Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and then Massachusetts. We rolled in on the 28th. I had shipped about fifteen boxes worth of stuff to my parents’ house before we left: clothes, computers, and other essentials. I had our respective workspaces up and running within 48 hours of our arrival. We started going to open houses and looking at properties immediately.
Fast forward three weeks and 25 houses later. We found a house we loved that needed some work, but just as we were thinking about putting in an offer, another house came up that knocked us off our feet. Turn-key. Amazing location. Fenced-in yard for our dog. Short drives from shopping and the beach. It was solid. It had big “levelling up” energy about it. Three weeks to the day that we arrived, we tendered an offer. After some negotiation, our offer was accepted and we signed a week later.
We had been going non-stop for months without any real days off. The first weekend when we didn’t have to look for houses felt wonderful. As exhausted as I was, I knew deep down that everything was going as it should
There is something about following a calling – following that higher self — that is both rewarding and painful. I think that people make the mistake of thinking that following a higher calling will make things easier or mitigate discomfort. It does not.
Being called forth or called forward is, in many ways, also a “calling out.” It is a moment when we are challenged. It is a letting go of that which was comfortable and familiar toward something that is new and untested. In these kinds of moments, we have to trust our intuition over our instincts, because our instincts are there to keep us safe and comfortable. They help us to avoid danger; and change is — above all things — dangerous. Intuition, however, comes from a higher place, and following it can be very uncomfortable.
There’s an example I’ve been using a lot lately for my philosophical counseling clients. Stagnation is like a favorite chair we’ve been sitting in that has conformed to the contours of our body, but to the point where it has moved beyond being “broken in” and is instead just “broken.” We sit in it and mistake its conformity to our shape — and our familiarity with that conformity — as comfort. It feels “safe” not because it’s actually comfortable, but because it’s familiar.
When we try to get up from that very lumpy, very “broken in” chair, and we feel that annoying ache in our back, we’re so blinded by the familiarity of our “favorite” chair that we refuse to believe that those aches and pains were actually caused by the chair itself. We even start to think that the chair actually relieves our pain, believing that the temporary relief of conformity is somehow healing the problem, rather than exacerbating it.
Colorado was a very familiar chair.
And when I was called to leave it behind, readjusting my body, my mind, and my soul was a process.
When relationships to both people and places end, there can be deep sadness, especially when others don’t want to see us go away. And we can feel all sorts of guilt, frustration, anger, grief, and all the things that come with it. It can be raw and exhausting. But, when we know it’s right; when we know that it is actually good for us; when we know it in our higher selves; there’s something else there, barely perceptible, just under the noise of our grief, soft and glowing …
There is relief.
There is a feeling of alignment with our future self; like something has finally snapped back into place that has been causing an irritating wobble for years. It reminds me of the times I’ve been to physical therapy, and learned that I’ve fallen into a habit of walking “wrong.” Then, somehow, those dopey exercises they give me to do gradually fixes my gait, and the pain I’d been carrying in my back, pelvis, or abdomen for years slowly fades as my body realigns.
That’s what this calling was, it was a deep and needed realignment, because so many things in my life had become misaligned.
When we moved to Colorado in 2005, I was running from so many things. About 15 years later, the ordinary wounds had healed. A few years after that, “convalescence” started to turn into atrophy. We had a chance, and we had to take it.
Over the years, I had witnessed people in our town who had chances to leave; but resisted or denied them when they came. Oftentimes, they had weathered a huge tragedy or tectonic, life-altering event. The town would come together to help them in a beautiful way. And then, almost invariably, a door would open: some chance for them to leave completely and start anew. Those who walked through that door often did so against the advice of most of the people who had helped them. Why would you leave a place that has rallied behind you to heal? But if they did walk through that door, they often found opportunities that transformed them and brought them greater abundance. They never looked back. They thrived in their new environments.
But those who chose not to walk through that door, who stayed because they had grown accustomed to the familiarity of the mountains, or didn’t want to seem ungrateful for all the kindness that had come their way, often didn’t fare well. Not only would their lights seem to dim, but another round of tragedy would often find them. Old wounds would be reopened, and the healing process would begin again. The cycle would continue, over and over. But at the end of each repetition of tragedy, disappointment, and eventual healing, the exit door that appeared would be smaller, and remain for a shorter duration.
This wasn’t the case for everyone of course. Some left to pursue other things, but in turn were called back — usually by a good job offer and/or a deep connection with the mountains (much in the same way we were called back to the east coast after we left). But, like us, they needed to leave first before those doors could open.
We had come to the mountains to heal, and that was done. When the door opened, we knew we had to leap through it. And now in this place, we find ourselves moving in rhythms and currents that feel deeply familiar. But now we are aligned differently, moving in unison with these rhythms instead of in spite of them as we had twenty-one years before. We are older, more seasoned, and experienced.
And the next chapter begins.
Wow! Best wishes from Minnesota for your next chapter!!
Wow indeed! It took me a while to get to this, but a most sincere "well done sir!", on every level.