Making a Living or Living a Making?
Do you ever find yourself muddling with an idea, trying to suss out what it’s telling you, and then you serendipitously come across a piece of writing that spells out EXACTLY what you were trying to get clarity on?
That happened for me this week. I’ve been slogging around for a few weeks in that familiar mud of what I “should” be doing because it makes money and what I “must” be doing because something creative wants to express itself, and finding the two seemingly at odds with one another.
So rather than stare at the (lovely-and-I’m-grateful-for-them-but-oh-so-closing-in-during-quarantine) walls of my house another minute, I got up early and trekked into the local redwoods with my son. We agreed that we’d take books and journals, hike for a bit, and then find places to be alone with our thoughts. And I opened a book I’ve been slowly reading in bite-sized pieces for a couple of months now, Mark Nepo’s “Drinking from the River of Light”. The title of the chapter I opened to was “Living a Making”. My heart leapt. I knew I was about to be schooled.
The chapter talked about assignments that come from “without” being in conflict with assignments that come from “within”. Nepo says that we’re making a living when we tend to the assignments from “without” and we’re living a making when we tend to the assignments from “within”.
And then he drives the point home by saying that “making a living is how we survive, but living a making is how we thrive. We need the strength and resilience to do both.” TO DO BOTH!!! To do both.
He goes on to describe a tension that exists between these two and that a key part of our journey is withstanding the tension of both until they work hand in hand.
Whoa.
The gift of that word tension gave a name to the tug-of-war feeling. And the assurance that they will eventually work together, was cold water on a parched throat. He didn’t say “in the hope that” or “if you’re lucky” but “until” . . . they work hand in hand.
“Making a living is how we survive, but living a making is how we thrive.”
So it’s tension. Not a bipolar inability to pick something and stick with it. Not a groundhog’s day flip flop from “should” to “must” and back. It’s just tension. The dictionary says tension is the act of stretching or straining. Who said that was bad? Particularly if in that act of stretching and straining, one is bringing two things together to work hand in hand.
So maybe if this week, this month, this year, we feel a polar pull in the directions of outer/inner, should/must, making a living/living a making, we let it be okay. If we find ourselves saying “but I should know” or “one of these has to go”, we pause for a minute and ask why we should know or why one of these has to go. Is that really true? In the words of a beloved teacher, maybe we just “bless our baby selves” for making it a problem, call it what it is (tension), and just keep going, keeping a hopeful eye on the ever-easing space between them.
