Choreography of the Soul

It’s always been curious to me why it is the events in our lives unfold the way that they do. Not in an analytical sort of way, but in a way that beholds the Great Mystery of a larger design; that sense of meaning found in trusting a higher purpose. That random things do happen, but most of the hand we are dealt is not random. That stuff goes down, and people come into our lives for a reason.

That we have an active role to play in living out our destiny.

Maybe there are folks out there for whom life works out pretty much according to plan. But for most of us, I think, life is what happens to you when you are busy making those plans – as the dictum goes. For most of us, things don’t work out at all the way we had expected. You think you got it all sorted out: where you’re going, what success looks like, the kind of person you will end up with, the kind of relationship you see yourself thriving in. And then someone or something happens along the way that turns everything on its head.

As Thomas Moore says, we may discover we are most ourselves when we are furthest from the self we think we ought to be.

I suspect most people reading this blog will know what I’m talking about. People who get married young, endeavor to live the American dream and follow all the rules – they’re another breed. I’m speaking to those who find themselves, at mid-life or older, without a partner, or questioning some major aspect of their life, or embarking on a journey that on some level they know risks shaking up their worldview. Because they’re the ones who are called upon to go deeper, to re-visit old assumptions or belief systems, to question what they held dear or what they were taught. They’re the ones to realize that happiness may come in a form unlike anything they had ever anticipated.

This is why, I think, it is so important to allow relationships to develop organically – to not impose our agenda on them, as much as we can. Especially romantic liaisons. To pursue someone for the sole purpose of steering it toward an end result is as much of a loss to our spiritual selves as it is to have sex with the sole purpose of getting off. The journey, or the lovemaking, is what really matters. As you get older you start to see this more and more. You start to define things differently. You see that a relationship that doesn’t last isn’t necessarily a failure. That we come into each other’s lives for a reason, at intervals that are often impeccably timed.

And if you’re lucky, you become an initiate, entering a world in which autonomy and intimacy can co-exist if you really work at it. Sources of unease become your teacher. You lose interest in molding other people into whatever it is you thought they ought to be. A lifelong courtship with the freedom of discovery begins.

You abandon the quest for life according to plan, and return instead to the call of the wild.