Mindful

Yesterday I had lunch with a colleague, and she mentioned in passing to me that a friend of hers was teaching a writing workshop for women. It was a daytime class, which meant it was mostly full of retired women, and the friend had commented that what was interesting was that in a group of 60+ year old women the recurring and common theme was still "Who am I? What am I doing? How do I interact and contribute to my community?"

After the last post I took myself off to bed and on the way gave myself a mental shake. "What the hell, self? How is it that at 35 years old you still don't know who you are? How can you still be figuring this out at 35?"

I suppose the fact is that the figuring out of who you are, what your purpose is, and where you are going is just a lifelong journey. You're never going to stop, because you never stop evolving and changing and life doesn't either. I won't always be mommy to a toddler. I won't always be mommy to a child. I hope I will be mommy until the day I die, but the mommy I am will change from year to year and day to day. And that's just true of every identity I wear. It's the very nature of life, and so to wonder why I'm still figuring out who I am? Well, it's illogical to think I'll ever really know. Or in other words of course I'm still figuring out who I am. I recently added a huge, huge piece to my puzzle, and all the other pieces have to go in around it, and it's changed the whole playing field.

Go me and metaphors.

Anyway. I know. It's trite and obvious, but sometimes it's those obvious things you have to pay attention to. In the words of the late David Foster Wallace:

One day, two young fish were swimming downstream, and met an older fish. The older fish said "Hey kids, how's the water?" and kept on swimming. A few moments later, one younger fish said to the other "Hey  ... what's water?"

Sometimes the obvious, the stuff right in front of us, is the most important.

And with that, I need to go and pay attention to that which is right in front of me, and most important. My help has been requested to drive a firetruck.