Where Soul Meets Body

Excerpts from The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho:

....whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth. ....And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to acheive it.

Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there. Wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.

Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them - the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

Life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny.

...Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives.

***

(this post is inspired by J - thanks for the lyrics, which I heard but never really heard - it's such a perfect description)

Where soul meets body.
I want to live where soul meets body. And let the sun wrap its arms around me. And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing. And feel, feel what it's like to be new.

I'm restless. People (including myself) have diagnosed it as everything from the adjustment period after a world trip to not having much to do at work to "life ADD." But I think restlessness is your soul trying to tell you something. And as we all know in the deep dark bottom of our hearts (and as Paulo Coelho allegorically described so well in The Alchemist), you should never ignore your soul, because if you do, it will stop speaking to you.

I can pinpoint moments, even extended periods, in my life where I have felt I was absolutely where I was supposed to be, doing what I was meant to be doing. I felt like this in law school (for the most part that is, excluding those bitter cold winter days and stifling summer days where I cursed NYC). I felt like this while traveling around the world. I felt like this while planning and opening the bakery. Which is not to say that my calling in life is to be a perpetual student, or a vagabond, or an entrepreneur. I think at different points in our lives, there are different things we are meant to be doing - life is a journey, not a single destination. So I don't think my "calling" is to be...let's say...a pilot, and that's my end all and be all in life. In fact, to the extent a "calling" refers to a job, I actually think that my calling may be an attorney, which is quite fortunate. At the end of the day, a job is the means to live the life you want, and my job has afforded me the opportunity to live the life I want - it allowed me to pursue three more years of education while living in NYC, it allows me to utilize my OCD and anal retentive tendencies, it affords me a comfortable life and has so far provided the means for me to pursue my lifelong dreams of opening a bakery and traveling around the world. But is my only dream/goal in life to be a lawyer? No. I still dream of writing a novel, becoming a mother, traveling to more countries and immersing myself in more cultures, learning new languages, etc. And I don't think any of those things are mutually exclusive. I fully plan to do all of those things in my lifetime. And I think you instinctively know when you should be pursuing certain things off your list. I want to be a mother some day, but I know I don't want it now. I want to write a novel, but I still haven't formed entirely the story I want to tell. When the time is right, your desire for that certain thing, your restlessness if you don't pursue it, gets stronger and stronger until you can't ignore it. And I think that, at least for me, that's the moment I really start taking action to fulfill that dream.

And so. I recently had an experience where I saw two paths that my life could go in the immediate future. I thought both were routes I wanted relatively equally, but when I really thought about the outcome of one of those options, I felt as if walls were closing in on me, I felt the air getting thinner, I felt the wings of my spirit being clipped, I felt....suffocated. Because that path is "the rest of my life." I think a lot of people have a tendency to think that they should be reaching the rest of their lives as they get close to 30. Meaning - they should be well on their way to advancing in their career, they should be married or on their way to imminent marriage, they should be settled in their lives and preparing to have children, etc. But when the rest of my life came into clear view for me, I was filled with the overwhelming urge to run far far away as quickly as possible.

Is there something wrong with me? Will I ever want to grow up, settle down and embrace the rest of my life? Maybe one day I will want that route, but not yet. I'm not ready for the rest of my life. I just want to embrace my life now, wherever it may take me.