Many times over the last thirty years I have walked away from my life’s purpose—on purpose every time. I used to feel embarrassed about this, as if I were deliberately sabotaging myself or, worse yet, somehow lacking in the courage to live it. For a while, every single time, I would dodge my own queries, sidestep my own gaze, try with all my might to lay out my explanations in one tidy, well-reasoned row, furrowed up against any encroaching runnels of lost liquid intent on making a path to the sea through my stories of that now. And then eventually I would look back on all that with a shock of re-cognition—never regret, for I consider it useless—and frank wonder: what on earth I was thinking?! I would tot up the losses and the delays and re-purpose to meet my purpose, but then, soon enough, I would go off again, following a faint trail (or none) and seeking—nearly always—the same thing: a safe place to which I could belong and contribute. Every last one blew up, some spectacularly, and took gob-sized chunks of my world with them. I grieved a great many of those losses.
Of late, however, I have watched the cinders drifting slowly to ground from some of those bouts off-path, and I cannot help but grin at the lot. For here is one thing I know for sure. There is no shame in walking away, nor is there the least delay, not even if the doing takes years, for apparent ‘detours’—and any runnels that wind their ways through my carefully tended rows—are all part of my main path.
On the side trails of our lives, we do a lot of learning. There we develop and hone the skills necessary to serve our callings. Sides inform middles. They put us on notice that there is something more to learn, to teach, to wonder through and wander toward. Sides keep us from potholing our main roads too badly from overuse. Sides teach us things that the middles cannot. Namely this: purpose itself turns out to be a many-splendored thicket (or muddle, take your pick) of our deepest longings, our most ephemeral curiosities, our stubbornnesses and fears and blind sides. Purpose, you see, finds us as we find ourselves, and we can do this as easily when we’re off-path as when we are on it. Eventually, well embarked within our thickets, we find that there’s no such thing as sides or middles, on or off: all of it matters, all of it helps, all of it ensures that we have a chance to make our little marks while here. Isn’t that just the bee’s knees?!
