40 Years Later: Life's Allegories and Other Such Lessons

I had a moment the other day which made me wonder if my life is turning out exactly the way it was intended – even the sad, happy, good and bad.

Destino. 

I will freely admit to be grateful to have no insight into any of this because I might have crawled into bed and waited for it all to pass.  For example, it might have been nice to avoid that first marriage disaster.  Yeah.  But it did teach me so much and of course, I grew stronger and clearer about who I was and what I needed in my life.  It also produced my beautiful children.  So even through unpleasant experiences, I have been learning along the way. 

This has prompted me to now wonder: are all our experiences already printed in our life syllabus and we’re just here to go through the course material?

The notion occurred to me the other day when I was with my son and trying to find some semblance of world order, or at least connect a few dots.

In 1984, I was 24 years old (fresh out of college) and just finished editing a book, earning what I thought was a lot of money. Naturally, I decided to blow this windfall on a big trip because some things in my life have remained constant.  

So, at 24, I traveled to Brazil, alone - before cell phones and digital maps and other useful tools we now deeply rely on. I went to Rio de Janeiro, Iguazu Falls, Salvador Bahia and the Amazon jungle (Manos) for about three weeks. It was an exotic, gutsy move on my part and one that my parents’ thought was ill-advised.

Perhaps they were right.  I did get mugged in Rio on the Copacabana but that’s a story for another time. It provided an interesting part of the trip’s narrative.

Unknowingly at the time, it was a foreshadowing of who I would eventually become - someone who is an amateur adventure junkie, looking for deep experiences and meaningful connections.  Maybe that trip shaped me into who I am today; only Destino could confirm this for us.

I learned a lot about myself on the trip – how to be alone, manage fear of the unknown and uncertainty and insight into what I was capable of in my life.

I had one of the most romantic nights of my life in Salvador, Bahia.  To this day I will always remember the evening a local man took me to a dance studio, alone, and played the Jermaine Jackson song, “Do What You Do” and led me so elegantly across the dance floor that, even for me, who does not have the best dance moves (though I have been learning to tango recently) glided effortlessly.

I saw so many new things, met interesting people and experienced a culture that was warm, exotic and exciting.

While it was a great trip, there were so many other places in this world that I wanted to explore; I never contemplated returning to the area in my lifetime. 

Last week though, 40 years later, I am standing in front of Iguazu Falls again - on the Argentina side this time.

Never in my life did I expect to be back at this site, looking at this view. My 24-year-old self probably didn’t think I’d ever live to be this old because at that age we have no longevity perspective.

This time though, 40 years later, I’m not alone. 

I’m with my son.  

In 1984 I never really imagined having kids, much less getting married and eventually be widowed. 

Yet, here I am sharing this natural wonder of the world with my son.  

While taking in this very precious moment of my life, I realize that somehow, in spite of my occasional messed-up thinking and the agony of loss, I wonder if everything we do in our lives is already preordained and we are just here to play it out?   Because here I am in a place I never planned to return to 40 years later with my son and trying to draw a line over four decades that creates an orderly and possibly predictable trajectory.

As I get soaked by the falls, I wonder if everything in my life is actually going along to plan – even with the ups and downs along the way.

That all of this is supposed to happen, even the extraordinarily messed-up things like when life assaults you with glass shards that shatter you into a thousand broken pieces. 

Taking the metaphor further, it seems possible to me now that even though no one wants to live in pain, sometimes the glass must break for the window to reassemble in some new, funky ways. 

Is it possible that the breaking of that glass is where all the growth occurs?

That maybe it reassembles in ways that are so different than you could have ever imagined like how I feel most days, and reinvention begins to emerge – wobbly at first but eventually resets as a new norm even if it feels foreign. 

For me, in the last two-plus years, I’ve learned that reinvention is not gentle. 

It's pure destruction at first.

In my case it was the destruction of a life assembled over a 26-year marriage.

In many cases it’s a divorce, or a recognition that the life you are living is not serving you anymore and something needs to dramatically change for you to save yourself and find a semblance of peace and the hope of happiness.

Yeah, like that.

But the real growth comes when you realize that the cost of staying the same is far more painful than the pain of change and in my view, most of us don’t willingly choose to change but find ourselves forced into a new situation or state of being that we need to reconcile.

But along the way, we do all have agency in the process.  We can choose to embrace a change or drag our sorry asses and resist it.  Either path is not easy and I don’t judge people for staying in ‘status quo’ because it’s easier to view someone else’s life and see the that change is probably the better path for all concerned.  I do believe that there are times when the greatest act of love is actually leaving.

In my case, I did not have a choice of staying the same.  My husband died and there was no confusion about this matter.  For me, staying the ‘same’ meant living in permanent loss and sadness – a perpetual state of agony.

The pressure of that scenario has forced me to continuously fight to make it through to some foreign land I call “the other side.”

Make no mistake. This involves very conscious decisions and battles which include small and very large choices to move forward and willingly and actively make myself do really uncomfortable things that I often would rather avoid with the intention of putting myself out there to build a pathway to find a new me.

It is often exhausting, sometimes humiliating, occasionally painful and often sad, but as with anything, the flip side is worth it. 

Some days I don’t know where I am on that other side but I’m no longer back where I was.

And, when I began this journey, I couldn’t imagine finding myself again, anywhere.

As friends and family will say to me now, here I stand today, almost unrecognizable. 

The same and completely different.

Because the old me had to die and evolve for a new me to rise.

And so, at the top of Iguazu Falls, I learned that when I least expect it and not paying much attention, a form of world order unexpectedly shows up.

Somehow random moments and events magically knitted together forming a pattern of logic and world order as I got drenched by the falls.  It occurred to me this may be an allegory of cleaning or baptism for me into a new phase of my life.

Here I was 40 years later, at this world wonder, a completely different person and yet totally the same, alone and single, traveling in the world again, trying to find myself. 

Suddenly things that seemed so random and unexpected were arranged in a way that looked like this was all absolutely meant to be. 

And maybe that’s perfect.

I’ve had a lot of people say to me, “You know you are going to be okay, right?”

No. I really don’t. 

Some days I do.  Some days I have sincere doubt.

I am already imagining many of you writing to me telling me I’m okay, cheering me on as you always do…

But, if I’m honest, and maybe if you are to, do any of us really know we are okay and going to be okay when we are going through tough stuff?  

A lot of people don’t make changes to their lives because the fear of the unknown is way more frightening than the pain of the present.

I suppose that the fear of never knowing you are going to be okay is the answer that you are already okay. The ambiguous line of life. And, yes I think I’m very much in my head now and overthinking it but I don’t think I’m alone in this thinking.

You are all going to be okay too - whatever you may or may not be going through. 

Most of us will find ourselves at some point like I did - at a waterfall or in the kitchen or the bathroom or in the car – having a moment and realizing that you are somehow okay even if you’re sad, alone, lonely or lost.  It’s just a ‘moment.

Because if you’re lucky like me, life is long and your syllabus is taking you where you are supposed to go, even if it’s in a foreign language or country.