“May all who enter as guests leave as friends.” ~ Unknown
I’ve started to explore different neighborhoods in D.C., including my own! Though I have a general sense of some things in D.C., it really does feel like I’ve landed in a brand new place because the city is so different from 10 years ago. It’s blossomed into a fascinating mix of revitalization and preservation. Part of my exploration is to see how I feel in different neighborhoods as potential places to buy my first home. My hope is that I can build a home here that becomes a place where people gather and share and learn. I’m not exactly sure what form that will take, but I do know I want a house where people enter as guests and always leave as friends. I want my home to feel homey for everyone who visits.
“Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.” ~Criss Jami
Our lives have both doubt and faith, especially in times of change. We’re worried about what might happen next, and we’re equally excited about the possibilities. We trust the process, and still wonder what we can do to help it along in the event of the slight chance that the process isn’t fine without a little encouragement from us.
Stories weave together the same way our lives do. Characters have doubt and faith. In the best stories the doubt gets the best of them and launches them into all kinds of sticky situations. No wonder stories resonate so deeply with us. They give us faith that if our favorite characters can overcome their circumstances, then so can we. Reading stories is an act of pure faith.
“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse
I woke up this morning with one pervasive thought—how very different my life was a month ago. Not just my geographic location but also my outlook on my own life. I thought I might lose Phin. I wasn’t in my own space. My career was a giant question mark. I felt like I was spinning my wheels in the toughest way, and I really didn’t know how I was going to gain any traction from that place.
Then last night I went out to dinner to sit and laugh and eat with friends just 2 blocks from the Capitol Building. Phin is on the mend and we’re both settling into our new digs. I’ve got a number of career options on the horizon. I’m hopeful about the many possibilities ahead. For a while I laid in bed and just rested in the stillness, the stillness of knowing that if we can make a commitment one tiny step at a time to make our situation better, then all those steps will eventually add up to something that looks and feels like progress. And while it might seem like an overnight process, there have been so many forces at work for a long time, forces far beyond my control or understanding, that made today’s circumstances possible.
This can be a hard perspective to keep in the moment. Certainly a month ago it was hard for me to imagine what life would be like beyond the very minute I was living. And that has its own gifts. All of a sudden we realize that we are empowered to do anything we want to do. All of a sudden we realize that if we can honestly ask for help and advice and then listen to it, then others will come to our aid. That’s certainly what happened to me. These life changes that happened to me in the last month were largely built on the generosity and kindness of friends. And I’m grateful for every one of them.
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” ~Leonard Cohen
This quote has been an important guidepost for me for many months, now more than ever. It inspired the title of my novel, Where the Light Enters, and it continues to guide me through the many changes that I’m experiencing in my life now.
No matter what’s happening to us and around us, it’s important for us to continue to ring the bells that still can ring. Smile and love and help where and when and how we can. Our actions don’t need to be perfect; we don’t need to be perfect. We can’t be. We live in a world that is wholly imperfect. All we can do is our best, and that means continuing to show up and put our hearts and souls into the act of creating the best lives we can, for ourselves and the people we love.
And that’s the trick of it all, that’s how the light gets in. It gets in with love and gratitude and actions guided by them. It gets in when we let ourselves we vulnerable, when we allow ourselves to learn and change and grow, not in spite of adversity, but because of it. That’s how we make a good life.
“After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ~Philip Pullman
My dog, Phin, is adjusting to our new apartment. Sometimes he gets some anxiety that manifests in barking as he’s adjusting to new circumstances so we have a whole routine we’ve used many times to help him adjusted as quickly as possible. (Luckily that’s the only way it manifests!) Brandon McMillan, the host of the show Lucky Dog, recently did an episode about a dog who had severe separation anxiety and he suggested a layering technique that included recording his voice and playing it back in a loop when he left the dog home alone. I decided to give it a try.
I recorded some stories to play for Phin as I left him in our new place for the first time yesterday. I recorded Anne Lamott essays, J.K. Rowling’s speech when she was the graduation speaker at Harvard a few years ago, and a few of my own pieces. When I turned on the loop, Phin curled up in a blanket in front of my laptop, put his head down, and went to sleep. Amazing!
Stories are always a comfort to me. To read them, to write them, to revisit them when I need their encouragement and inspiration the most is a privilege I never take for granted. I never realized that reading them out loud could be so comforting for Phin, too. Philip Pullman was absolutely right—we all need a good story. Dogs included.
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.” ~Seneca
Today’s my last day in Florida. Tomorrow I’ll take off for Washington D.C. to start the next chapter of a good life. I don’t know what I’ll find there. I couldn’t tell you what my life’s going to look like a week from now much less a month or a year. I should be nervous or scared or at least hesitant, at least for a moment, but I’m not. Not one bit. I know that something wonderful is there for me, that something wonderful has been there for me for a long time. Now I’m just ready to stand toe-to-toe with that future and say hello. I’ve finally found my way.
“And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” ~J.K. Rowling
There’s something amazingly strange and eventually wonderful about starting from rock bottom. Rock bottom’s a blank canvas, an empty room. It’s space, and within space, we can create something we love.
This quote from J.K. Rowling has been running through my mind this week as I prepare to change everything in the coming days. I’ll pack a few suitcases into my Mini, put Phin in his carrier in the front seat, Fedex my small amount of remaining items, and away we’ll go, headed straight for a new adventure in Washington D.C.
Rock bottom has such a negative connotation, but we don’t have to think of it that way. Rock bottom is solid, stable, unwavering. There really is no better place to build from. I’ve scraped down the walls of my life, removing the old chipped paint to reveal something fresh and new that is ready for color and beauty. I’ve stopped trying to make the best of the old parts of my life that no longer fit. I lovingly and gently packed them up and gave them away to make room for the new and extraordinary.
If you’d like to read the entirety of the speech that Rowling gave at Harvard that includes this quote, click here.
“To bring the end safely home is the goal of the creative mind.” ~Dr. E.O. Wilson
Creative work is messy. Stay focused on your creative project’s goal as you wade through the chaos of the creative process. Transform the chaos into energy, fuel. Let all the doubt, fear, and difficulty of getting what’s in your imagination out into the world, motivate you to work harder and reach further. Dare to go far beyond any limitations you think you have, and bring back what you find.
“If you see a whole thing — it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.” ~Ursula K. Le Guin
If we just look at life day by day, it can seem frustrating. All we’ll see is the small step we took today, and the long road ahead of us that we still have to travel to get to where we’d like to go. Whenever that overwhelms me, I reflect. I look how far I’ve come from where I started. I step back. That perspective helps me to get back to work. Like the ingredients of a cake, or the brushstrokes of a painting, daily life becomes so much more than dirt and rocks, so much more than the sum of its parts. Together, those days create meaning and purpose. Together, they make a difference.
I recently saw the movie Mrs. Doubtfire again. I’d forgotten how many powerful career lessons are embedded in that story. If you’re looking for a new job, or frustrated with what’s happening in your career, watching this movie might help to inspire and motivate you to embrace change. It certainly did for me.
– What seems like a step back can be a vehicle to leap forward. Daniel (Robin Williams) goes to work as a shipping clerk for an educational media company even though he was once a very successful voice over actor. That job leads him to the opportunity to bring the character of Mrs. Doubtfire to a wide audience.
– While we might feel hampered by personal obligations that make it difficult to make career changes, those obligations can be our salvation. Because Daniel had to earn a living to get visitation rights to see his children and get his own apartment, he had to work several jobs. This combination of demanding responsibilities helped him to become a better person and a better father.
– Be who you are and be prepared to contribute in a creative way, even if that’s not in your job description. Daniel could have kept his head down as a shipping clerk, but instead he voiced his creative ideas at the right time to the right person. This decision to share his ideas led him to the opportunity to get out of the shipping dock and back onto the stage where he wanted to be.
– It’s okay to be angry, frustrated, afraid, and upset. Use these emotions to your advantage by using them as fuel for change. Daniel exhibits all of these emotions, and rightly so. The key is that he felt them fully. And yes, he sometimes lashed out at others as a result. But most of the time he channeled the emotions to motivate him to learn how to cook, keep a clean and orderly house, and to work hard at his multiple jobs.
Mrs. Doubtfire has been one of my favorite movies ever since I first saw it over 20 years ago. It was only this week that I realized what wonderful lessons it holds for all of us in the midst of a career transition, or thinking about one. If Mrs. Doubtfire can do it, so can we.
Christa Avampato 