Uncaged

For the past six years, I’ve worked a second job. It’s fulfilling in a way that my full time job isn’t. This side gig also helped me overcome a financial setback and motivated me to engage in a challenging training program for the past two years. I’ve spent a lot of time imaging how I might someday retire early from my full time job and devote my energies to this secondary pursuit.

This year I’ve been writing here about nurturing my light in resistance to the darkness around and within me, slowing down, living lightly. In my last piece I mentioned exhaustion and the possibility of working less. Two jobs had begun to feel like too much. But how could I give up this secondary pursuit that I love, and my relationships with the people I serve there?

Then a couple weeks ago, one of my long standing clients suddenly left. That shattered my illusion that I was indispensable. In its place shone the understanding that I’m responsible to, not for, my clients. Suddenly the field of possibilities widened. For example, I had been planning to establish a solo enterprise, which seemed the best way to attain my goal of eventually switching careers. That would necessitate a pause in my practice, but now I saw that I could take an indefinite break. And I could use that time to explore how exactly I want to engage in that field.

Next month the training program comes to an end. Through it I’ve met a dozen bright and interesting people with whom I share a love of learning and a desire to develop particular skills. I’m the oldest member of that cohort, and was feeling jealous of the years and freedom the others had before them to develop— after all, by 25 I’d become a wife and mother and so the outlines of my life had been established early.

I reminded myself that I had planned my life this way for a reason. My parents had me and my sister in their twenties, and in their fifties they were free to enjoy the interests that called to them. This inspired me to become a young parent, yet here— with my daughter well established in her own career and my marriage to her father decades in the past— in my fifties I was overloaded with responsibility and working more than ever.

How had I ended up here? An image from a story I’d heard in a dharma talk came to mind: a captive tiger at a zoo who continued to pace back and forth in the confines of his cage even after the door had been lifted away. My ability to work hard and put in long hours had served me well. After reckless years in the wake of a devastating end of a relationship, I’d needed the earnings and discipline of a second job to get myself back on solid ground. But the dust on that achievement was long settled.

Then while reading, I came upon a passage describing the analysis of a dream in which a woman returns to her seat on a train after something caught her interest and is thrown into panic to discover that her briefcase has been stolen. Her briefcase can be seen as emblematic of “the way she structures situations by creating external demands and obligations to which she devotes herself as a way of diverting attention from more authentic wishes and her terror of ending up alone” (P.L. Wachtel, 2008). Oof. That hit me right in the heart.

Writing, traveling to other countries and going on horseback adventures, being open to the possibility of new romance— these are scary forays into uncertainty requiring more than just an open, willing attitude. And as Joseph Campbell noted, you can’t get to point B without leaving point A and venturing into the woods.

I took my first steps last week, informing my employer and clients at my second job that I’m wrapping my work up there mid-June. I’m feeling excited and sad and nervous by turn. And I’m proud of myself for setting out for the woods.

What old beliefs, attitudes, and habits are keeping you from the possibilities that call to you?