Learning, adapting, evolving. We may bundle those activities into a package labeled “reinvention,” but I prefer to think of them as natural elements of living a life. I consider them essential to “showing up.”
To me, showing up is about experiencing – for better or for worse. Showing up is about responsibility – to ourselves and those who depend on us.
We show up in our moments of joy. We show up when our children need us. We show up when we’re conscious of a disconnect between who we’ve become and who we want to be.
But nothing’s quite so simple, is it?
We do what we deem appropriate in a balance of self, family, and community. We’re conflicted. We’re tired. Life is hectic and priorities are always shifting.
Circumstances set us back – an illness, a job loss, a family member who requires our care and attention. A relationship ends, a marriage falters, an addiction holds us in its grip. We lose ourselves, or we lose our grounding.
Recovering from Setbacks
Who else remembers the expression “keep on truckin’?” It used to make me smile with its jaunty optimism, not to mention its practical bent. I’ve long preferred it to “get back up on the horse” because frankly, the horse analogy seems less applicable and much less empowering.
Some falls in life teach us what we shouldn’t pursue.
But keep on truckin’? That one fits me. It has oomph, vitality, momentum.
This doesn’t mean our setbacks don’t cause us to stall or even stagnate for a bit. It’s only natural to lick our wounds when we’re hurt, and if we’re smart (and able), we explore what knocked us down in the first place – our own choices that are ill-advised, risks we take that simply may not work out as we hoped, and the psychological baggage we carry that occasionally pulls us away from our better angels.
Sometimes it takes a helping hand to get us going again, and we’re grateful when that assist shows up; we dust ourselves off, we learn our lessons, we keep going.
If we’re showing up in the lives of others, we may be the ones to offer that hand.
Life, Distracted
Do you get pulled off course? I do.
Is your time and focus fractured too often? Mine is.
Do you find it easier to help someone else with their issues than to face your own?
Me, too.
To say that I’ve been distracted in the past weeks is an understatement. I’ve been splitting my time (and concentration) among several competing areas, while simultaneously immersed in paperwork pandemonium, not unusual during April, and likely to continue each year until my youngest is out of college.
In other words, I’m showing up elsewhere – as a parent – on tasks that need my attention. The consequence is less time for many aspects of my work, writing, and personal life, which I alluded to recently as a disappearing act.
Revving Up for Starting Over?
Lately I’ve communicated less in social media. I’ve grown emotionally distant from friends. I’ve been busy, I’ve been distracted, but it’s something more, though I’m hard-pressed to identify it.
I haven’t shown up in the lives of others, but I’ve been mucking around in a murky soup of showing up for myself. I’m trying to figure out who I am at this moment, who I want to be (if not “this me”), and how I might get there – wherever “there” reveals itself. I’m trying to make sense of the world and my place in it. This isn’t the first time; it won’t be the last.
Is this a prelude to a more significant reinvention? Damned if I know!
Am I starting in on that “starting over” topic again?
Maybe. My engines rev and then they idle. I tell myself I’m free, and I realize I’m not. I’m moving forward, and I’m stuck, stuck, stuck.
Then there’s my introspective nature, my desire to examine, my tendency to be self-critical – all of it, thankfully, offset by the capacity to dream. I’m formulating a new sort of showing up – for myself. I’m trying on what that might mean.
Easy Come, Easy Go, Not So Easy
In some ways, showing up for ourselves is easier when we’re younger.
Trying on a new country in my twenties was a piece of cake – at least for me. I was single. I was responsible only for myself. I was energetic, with an abundant appetite for adventure. I didn’t have a dime, and it was utterly irrelevant. Isn’t this part of the beauty of youth – our vitality, our hunger, our ability to travel light?
If I showed up in my own life more at 20 or 30, I also did so with little self-consciousness. Those were days before cell phones, days before tweeting our every move, days before posting selfies with a few flicks of the fingertips. We showed up in the moment with the commentary of our running thoughts and inner voices, taking snapshots with our eyes and lodging them in our memory.
And when we took those images, we were often looking outward – which does not preclude an inner journey, but one that was for ourselves rather than public consumption. And so we documented with our Nikons and our Polaroids, and noted our impressions in a letter, perhaps an email, or a personal journal.
The result, in my opinion, was a greater capacity to experience important moments – and all the rest – as we went about the business of living.
Marriage and Family
Flash forward to marriage and family. Showing up takes on another complexion. Our words, our attitudes, our actions – all impact the lives of those we love.
So we show up – happily, expansively, wearily, mechanically. We deal with relocations, job changes, money headaches, compromises. We encounter challenges and manage them as best we can; we learn, we adapt, we keep on truckin’. We show up to keep our relationships thriving. We show up to raise our children. We power through the conflicts of a colicky baby and cranky customers, packing school lunches and packing bags for a business trip, writing out checks for the PTA and bigger checks when it’s time for college applications.
“Me” may get lost in “we.”
But we keep showing up.
Evolution Versus Reinvention
I have mixed feelings about the word reinvention, though I use the term when it suits me. My dilemma is partly in the fact that I’ve reinvented so much in my life that evolution is a more suitable description. Change, as the saying goes, is the only constant.
And in the light of change – the time, at last, to genuinely give it space to roll around in my mind – I’m mulling the relationship between change and showing up. I’m asking myself this: If all we do is assess, process, absorb – but we don’t act – are we engaging in reinvention, or simply stewing in our own juice? Are we going through motions? Are we stuck in fear?
I ask myself why I am where I am, why I am who I am, why – in my own mind – I continue to fall short.
I know the “reasons” that come into play – some are outside my control. But I’m convinced they don’t comprise the whole story. On some level, in particular since my children left home, I’m struggling to show up in my own life.
Hanging In
We show up with our presence, our hearts, our words, our silence, our stepping forward, our stepping back. We show up with our support, our contrition, our hanging in.
Sometimes we show up in the lives of others, compensating for not showing up for those closest to us. Sometimes we need to sit back and let others show up for us.
Not everyone shows up – for themselves, much less for others. They may do so in a minimal fashion. They may turn their backs entirely.
That’s not an accusation; it’s an observation.
Sometimes it’s a matter of selfishness. Sometimes it’s a matter of survival. I don’t pretend to know the justifications, aware there are times I haven’t shown up, and looking back – I wish I had.
Where Am I? Right Here. Where is That? I Don’t Know.
I didn’t start this morning writing with any particular intention. The refrain of “showing up” has been looping through my mind for days, and I needed to see where it might lead. I hoped for clarification. I wondered who might be traveling the same journey. Perhaps these meandering thoughts reflect where I am – not unhappy, if somewhat off-balance; not dispirited, if intermittently melancholic; not adrift, albeit uncertain where to pinpoint my place in some grander scheme.
Is this a conversation about mindfulness? Maybe, but it feels like something more. Mindfulness that spurs action. Mindfulness that acknowledges responsibility.
And so I write to find answers or at least, more helpful questions. I write to locate myself in changing context. I write to motivate myself for whatever comes next as I struggle to imagine what that is. I write from the knowledge that I’m in transition, that I have constraints, that I wish to clear my own way of obstacles. I write because it’s my way of showing up – learning, adapting, and evolving.
But there must be more: we never know what time is left to us. We want it to count for something. Our showing up must have meaning.
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Thank you for the openhearted note, even as you feel like staying quiet. Much appreciated, as I am also in the place you wrote of- quiet, drawn in- gratefully, with my Mom, working through her challenge.
Every ebb and flow is a lesson. Sometimes it’s better to be quiet and follow to your inner compass.
Thanks for showing up in your wonderful way.
I find that place of quiet to be really helpful, Jan. Do you?
Thank you for your good words, and wishing you peace as you work through your Mom’s challenge.
Excellent, thought provoking post. I’m in a similar mood and daydreaming about the how, why and what of my journey. Thanks for sharing yours.
Thank you for reading and commenting, Jane. It’s comforting to know others are in this place. And I’d love to hear how you eventually move into whatever comes next…
embracing my solitude more being less doing … following my heart. living with more unknowns which is actually bringing more opportunities. you know what is right for you.
“In some ways, showing up for ourselves is easier when we’re younger.
Trying on a new country in my twenties was a piece of cake – at least for me. I was single. I was responsible only for myself. I was energetic, with an abundant appetite for adventure. I didn’t have a dime, and it was utterly irrelevant. Isn’t this part of the beauty of youth – our vitality, our hunger, our ability to travel light?”
I JUST had this conversation with a friend in her 30s today. She was baffled by my expressed inhibitions about making big moves and big decisions. I did my best to explain that “when you have kids, it’s more complicated than that.”
I relate to everything you’ve written here, especially the fragmented nature of it, which is how I feel most of the time!
Keep on truckin’ indeed. 🙂
Kids do change everything, don’t they, Surviving Limbo Girl. Even when they’ve theoretically flown the nest!
Silly me, I keep romanticizing that once they fly the nest I’ll have some sort of renaissance and conquer the world…Oh wellsky, whatever delusion gets me through the night, right? 😉
Like Wolf I am not fond of the term “reinventing” in reference to individuals and personal development. I assume the terminology was borrowed from 1980s MBA buzzwords and you may well know the 1980s bestselling book Reinventing the Corporation by wunder kid Naisbitt. Somehow it has now been adopted as common vernacular in self-help and fuzzy tv shows. I actually find the term a little insulting. You see, I don’t believe people need to be re-invented, rebuilt, overhauled, remodeled, redone, restored, renewed, de-bugged, repaired, retreaded, reconstructed, doctored, fixed, adjusted, converted, renovated or transformed. I must be crazy, or at least in a small minority.
Unlike Hobbes, I think people are generally good and perhaps just need to be “tweaked”, rest, refocus, and incrementally improve. In fact most major religions and philosophies preach and suggest incremental inprovement physically, mentally, spiritually, and materially.
Life is a journey that we can experience, learn and improve upon ourselves. Hence a combination of examining one’s life, living life (or “Just Do It” as Nike artfully states), and showing up day in and day out to slowly improve and learn are the methods of achieving this.
This is an extremely complex topic that cannot be addressed in a few paragraphs. That said there are some things everyone can do to improve their lives.
First when I wake up in the morning I think briefly about what I am grateful for. This lasts maybe a minute or two. If you are really having trouble with this, write out a list during the day and leave it by your bed to read in the morning. After a while you will not need a list.
At the end of the day I ask myself and my children the same thing every day (which drives them crazy): 1) What good things have I/you done today? 2) What did I/you learn today? 3) What did I/you accomplish? 4) How can I/you do these things better next time or tomorrow?
These are simple and mundane exercises based on Jesuit and Buddhist philosophy, but you would be surprised at how such small reflections can improve your life and keep you focused on the things that are truly important.
I love your response, Curtis. Wise words and much to consider, as well as act on.
Have you been reading my mind? So many of your thoughts resonate with me right now…
I do agree that often it is so much easier to ‘show’ up in the lives of others than face our own… and solving other peoples’s problems… How much easier is that? xv
D.A. – I have been in the situation you describe for several years, in various degrees and phases. A year and a half ago I was at a particular directionless point and decided to take the advice of a friend who had been advising me to take the Midlife Transitions course at the local Jung center. This was very helpful. According to Jungian psychology, the midlife is not merely a male deficiency which causes them to want to buy sports cars and know young women, it is the point at which all people should be coming into their own psychologically, and realizing that their emerging “true self” may be at odds with the combination of what society has conditioned them to be and the self-identity they have assumed as a result. The importance of this is that it is the opportunity to reflect, discover who you are, and re-fashion your life into one that is congruent with your real self while there is still time to make the correction and enjoy the result. This can sometimes result in drastic lifestyle rearrangements, depending on the degree to which you have been out of accord.
My personal consequence was that I decided to figuratively “drive a stake in the ground” and take steps to redirect course in a concrete way, even if I could not predict the exact reaction. For many years I had been wanting to work toward a PhD, but I didn’t see any curriculums which quite aligned with my interests, and the money and effort seemed daunting, especially since at this stage of life the likely rewards are smaller. But in the research process I discovered that one of the institutions I was considering had a graduate level certification in an area in which I was interested, and which would likely have some practical benefit.
I have just finished that program. The mysteries of the midlife transition have not all been resolved, but I can say with certainty that it has been a worthwhile experience. It is undeniable that I have moved my life forward. Things are more certain than they used to be, with new possibilities inherent. One of the things I have learned is that at midlife it may be more important to do something, anything, to change the dynamic, even if you are not sure your choice is optimal. I think nature abhors stagnation, movement in any direction is better than no movement at all.
“showing up” is a great phrase. I first came across it from my American coach. If you don’t truly show up you can’t really have the experience of your life. Another saying I like is “If you want to win the lottery you have to buy a lottery ticket” In other words you need to participate in what you want otherwise you will just end up being an observer of your own life.
This is so where I find myself these days. like adolescence all over again – feeling wiser and more free in some ways – but more fearful and bound in others. I so appreciate you bringing up the question of whether or not you’re showing up for yourself in your life…..it made me stop in my tracks. That’s exactly my problem lately – and needing the time to draw inward and figure it out.
I think so many of us understand this feeling. In one way, I think the treadmill of our past 20-30 years starts to show signs of slowing down as kids grow up, and we expect more time. So we’re looking for reinvention but are still bogged down in the same ol’ same ol’ that is supposed to be clearing up. And when we’re young, we are looking at the next mountain to climb. At mid-life, we’re looking down the other side of the mountain. Looking to contribute dramatically, maybe because we hope it will buy us more time. I am equally confused by this stage in life, yet oddly thrilled to be awake enough to feel pain again. I have finally decided to just deal with this day. Do what feels right. Breathe. Until the next panic attack. Your honesty rings so true in this heart of mine.
I just stumbled across this post and wanted to offer my thoughts. I love this idea of embracing life’s uncertainties and using them to evaluate where you are and where you want to go. I was at a big crossroads earlier this year and somehow found the fortitude to, as you say, keep on trucking. It’s such a hard thing to do – that picking up and dusting off – but if we can do it when the chips are down (metaphor overload!!! Sorry) then we know we can do it any time.
PS – Let me come to the defense of “get back on the horse.” As someone who’s either fallen from or been thrown from horses many times, getting back on is effing HARD!! You’re probably a little banged up. You’re probably a little scared. You went down either because you screwed up and weren’t paying attention (embarrassing!) or because the horse did somethign you weren’t prepared for (scary!). Getting back on the horse requires both mental and physical strength. Only once you’re back up can you get the momentum to keep on trucking!