Isolation has a way of stripping us bare. I fully expected it to reveal fissures in relationships. I was watching for cracks in the foundation of the family system. What I did not expect was to discover a yawning chasm within myself.
I thought I knew myself well. I’m no stranger to reflection. In fact, I was looking forward to a little relief from self-discovery. I make it a point to see a therapist regularly. Someone needs to challenge me to stay grounded, and recently she’d been digging around in some old trauma. Despite her assurance the therapy would be fruitful I have to admit I was relieved when the shut-down resulted in the cancellation of my upcoming sessions. Little did I know that isolation would take the therapist’s place.
I’m a worker bee. That’s my euphemistic way of admitting to a lifelong addiction to work. I would never call myself a workaholic. That would imply a problem. Rather, I see myself as having skills particularly suited to hard work. I’ve always seen it as a gift—a set of gifts I can bring to bear for the benefit of others. If it is what I am supposed to be doing in the world, if it would be wrong to bury my talents, then surely you cannot accuse me of being an actual workaholic. No, I simply have an outsized capacity for work. More so than most people. At least that’s what my inner narrative has always been.
It was the narrative I was born into. It was the narrative carefully cultivated in me by my parents. And it was all tied up with lofty words like “calling” and “responsibility.” Those words are hard to fight. I’ve spent a good part of the last fifteen years trying to undo that damage. I’ve learned that words like that can be used manipulatively. What gives them power is the truth that underlies them. What causes damage is buying into someone else’s vision of how that truth should be expressed in your life.
I’d been robbed and I didn’t even know it. I had these beautiful, powerful talents and someone had yanked them out of my hands before I even knew they were there. Someone else had decided those talents should be used professionally. Someone else decided I needed to excel in business in order to put my talents to the best use. They dangled my talents out in front of me, leading me the way they wanted me to go, and I never thought to question the direction I was heading. I never got to hold those talents unformed, wet from birth.
I did all that was planned for me. Big time career. Big money. Big prestige. Big house. Big, big, big. And I bought into it all. I thought that’s what those talents were for. And, honestly, there was nothing inherently wrong with where I ended up or how I honed those talents. What was wrong was that it was someone else’s dream. What was wrong was the dust in my soul where there should have been life and creativity and joy.
And one day as I stepped off a curb in New York City and found myself ankle deep in icy water, something shifted inside. I realized I was dying inside, and I begged silently to be freed from my success. I needed to go home. I needed to find my source again—this time, on my own terms and in my own way.
I got my wish. Within a year my job disappeared, fortunately accompanied by a golden parachute that set me free in my mid-life years to completely change direction. And she lived happily ever after. The End.
Not.
I went at it backwards. I took those talents in their business form and I started using them in a volunteer capacity for nonprofits and human services organizations. I thought that would fix it.
Nope. I felt like a color picture being shown in black and white. The mission was more rewarding to be sure, but there was no change in me. It was still business as usual. I’m sorry to say it took another eight years or so before I figured that out. But once I realized it, I resigned from everything business related.
I realized I needed to stop trying to dig down to find those nascent talents. Instead, I needed to stop trying. Period. I needed to let all those layers of expectations emulsify and melt away like so many layers of varnish. I needed to sit still. Not do. I needed to listen deeply and observe what was already percolating in my heart. I needed to hear the song that had sung my talents into existence.
And in these last six years, I’ve made real progress. I quit all things financial. I went to seminary. I took up weaving—something I’d had a taste of as a child. I reclaimed huge chunks of myself and life was richer and more meaningful than ever. These last nine months I even figured I could safely add back some of that business related volunteer work.
Of course, it’s been a struggle to keep my hard won balance. There’s something about business work that completely sucks me under. It takes over my life, even when it’s volunteer work. So I “fixed” it. I made sure I built time into each day for my hobbies. I bought a loom I’d been wanting. I joined clubs doing the kinds of crafts I enjoy. But of course, when push came to shove and work needed to be done, those hobbies took an ever smaller back seat.
And then came the pandemic and its therapist, isolation. I was so darn jealous of everyone talking about cleaning their houses and binge watching movies and catching up on projects. My work just moved online and I was busier than ever. As tension and resentment built, I felt like I was about to burst. Until my sister showed up with a pin. She suggested that perhaps I was still going about it backwards. What if those hobbies—all the things I did only after my work was done—what if those were truly who I was? What if that was what I was meant to be doing all along?
This stopped me in my tracks. My world turned upside-down and suddenly felt right. What if the most important thing I have to do is to create something? What if I am a “maker” not a “doer”? What if all that “doing” was someone else’s vision of me? Who would I be if I did what feeds my soul, what gives me joy?
Isolation brought me face to face with the closet of projects I’ve collected all the years I dreamed of retirement. I’ve been retired for fifteen years now. Those projects are still in the closet. Isolation revealed that even when the entire world stopped, I didn’t stop working. The problem is not the world. The problem is me. The problem is my expectations of me. I thought my worth was measured by the productivity I could wring from my gifts and talents. Anything less than maximum effort and output would be failure.
In isolation, I’ve discovered that those gifts and talents are there to create joy—my joy as well as the joy they bring to others. Their worth is intrinsic and unchanging. Their worth is not enhanced by my busy-ness, nor is it diminished by “wasting” a whole day lost in what I have mistakenly called my hobbies. I’m trying to understand that creativity and joy are the most important part of every day, and if I have time left over for “real work” then that is icing on the cake.
I won’t lie to you. I haven’t got there yet. This is only a few weeks old. I’m still having to force myself to see creativity and quiet enjoyment as the important work of the day, not the business work. It doesn’t come naturally yet. But it will. This is a pearl of great price. It is worth breaking those old habits. It is worth deconstructing those old narratives.
I promise you one thing, though—she lived happily ever after. The End.
Gayle tries to be defined by who she is rather than what she does—but the two are symbiotic. She's a pastor, CPA, Ops Manager for the New Story Festival, and a wholehearted enabler of all things good.