Maya Angelou offered this quote some time back:
“I've learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.”
Each of us could write a book on that line alone!
Making sense of what’s happening to me takes up a bunch of
my time. That’s just how I’m built. I've always wondered about things. I know I
am not alone. We each have a story that would describe what we think, feel, and
are passionate about. We could enhance that story with the activities we keep
busy at, most nominally, the daily acts that support earning a living – our
job. Of course this is different from the chores of daily life that tell yet
another story – motherhood, parenthood, home owner (painting, cleaning, fixing,
gardening, mowing, shoveling…you know the drill!).
I am keenly aware of our circumstances behind our front door
and garage door. The house is partially empty in preparation of our move to
another place. Boxes populate the garage. Those boxes are books, china,
glassware and papers that we know we can live without for awhile. More empty
boxes are stacked at the ready for filling. Closets have been thinned out;
loads of unneeded clothing has been donated to local shelters, re-sale shops
and charities. Items we know we will not use in the future have been given to
family members and friends who we know will make good use of them. Of course
still more packed boxes are safely stashed in family garages awaiting our
retrieval once we have landed in a new home.
So our story is one of transition. We are leaving the
current address at some point and will move to another one on a date yet to be
determined. The why of this circumstance is another story. Some of that has
already been shared in this space in earlier dates. Yet it is the story that is
in movement from one moment to another, along a string of hours, days, weeks,
and months that continues the story-line. Other people are living this same sort
of story all over the country. At any given time a family is in transition from
one place to another, from one job to another, one circumstance to another. It
is the nature of life, of ‘things’.
The sweep of an epoch or era is another story-line, one we
could experience by selecting the moments of observation in various sampled
lives. First on this street, then on that block, another in a city far away,
while we dabble in watching yet another family’s history unfold in a suburban
town right next door.
Lives are lived. Acted out on a moment to moment basis. The
pain and panache, the hopes and dreams, the angst and the joy; each and so much
more is there to be felt personally or observed outwardly, impersonally.
Drive down your street. Cast your eyes on the doors and
windows of each home. Know that stories abide within. You know your own story.
Do you know the story of your neighbor? Ought you to know it? Or does privacy
dictate withdrawal from knowing? We are not speaking here of snooping. Just
knowing the depth and breadth of lives lived nearby – lives that mirror our
own, or perhaps starkly do not follow our mold at all!
I was talking with my adult daughter the other day. We were
talking about American history and what we understand of it. It turns out there
is much we do not know between the two of us. There are perspectives that are startlingly
at odds. Then we spoke of regions of the country. What is it about the
southwestern states (New Mexico , Nevada , Arizona )
that pique my interest? For some the large spaces, the enormous landscapes, the
long vistas, call forth feelings of eternity and aloneness. For some these
feelings are absent; the wide open spaces call forth sensations of alien space
and danger.
Knowing that these regions were populated for hundreds of
years – maybe thousands of years – makes us aware that there is a story here we
do not know. We sense it. We know it must have been but it is outside of our
history. My daughter was born and raised in the Midwest .
I was born in California and lived in Massachusetts and New York
as well as Illinois .
Our history is dominated by western European history and the story of emigrants
who sought the New World and settled it. That
is our history. But there was a pre-history of the place in which the newcomers
settled.
Each soul made a life. He/she had no choice. They were born
in one spot and drew breath. They lived. They made something of it. They
specialized their abilities to accomplish a set of tasks. They helped others
maybe. They traded or sold their help if there was a demand for that. In that
sense they made a living. But first they made a life.
Their story is born. And lived. Through the eons of time.
Each and everyone of us. Strung together is a larger story, a history. Oft
times those histories are chosen or ignored. That creates yet another history.
A tale of sagas lasting through time, never done.
Maya Angelou got it right, didn't she?!
January 7, 2014
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