Lately I have been thinking about ladders. I just came back from a week in New Mexico, where we were hiking alongside some old Pueblo caves and a few of them had these old wooden ladders, allowing you to climb up and see what they looked like inside. I commented to Catie as I scrambled up each ladder, “I’m like a kid, if I see a ladder I just feel like I gotta climb it.”
I’ve been feeling a bit unsettled, anxious. In retirement, life doesn’t seem to have an endgame, a destination, a finish line. What are my expectations in life, what do I want to accomplish in relationships, in my art, in my life? I’ve lived so long planning for something, it is an uncomfortable feeling when there is no clear path, no real defined destination, no Gantt chart that plots my course or predicts my future.
Then I start to think of these references to “the ladder to success.” How many times have we heard that in our lives and in our careers, about “reaching the top”, about climbing out of some pit our life is in, clinging to the rungs of some metaphorical ladder? It was what I always looked to, getting to the top, climbing higher. I’m not saying mine was the “tallest” ladder leaned against the tallest wall, but wherever I decided it stopped was where I was focused. And normally I got there.
Now I’m wondering how sensible this really was? A ladder has a bottom and a top and a lot of rungs along the way, but no opportunity at all for detours. I am starting to think, to understand, that life is about the detours. Thinking you know where you are going and climbing to get there keeps you on a pretty straight path. Doesn’t it keep you on that ladder and limit your exposure to other experiences? On a ladder there is no right or left, only up or down.
So perhaps I am starting to feel unsettled about life because I am trying too hard to figure out where it is going. I don’t know where my life is going. The real truth is that I don’t need to know. It goes where it goes. And truthfully, it might be better, more interesting, to not know.
Life I guess goes where it goes. Maybe it should be a trail through a thick forest, not rungs on a ladder. Along the way are choices we can make to stay on the path or take a different one. I don’t know where mine is going. What happens if I don’t really care? If what I really care about are the people I can meet, the experiences I can have, and the uncertainty of not being able to see that uppermost rung? Is not climbing, is not knowing the destination really so bad?
By staying so focused on reaching some goal, how much have I missed along the way? How many opportunities have I squandered because I “thought” I knew where I was going and stayed on that ladder?
All of a sudden I feel a bit lighter. With the burden of precognition lifted, the expectation of knowing, of predicting where my life is going is removed. Let life take me where it can, limited only by where I am willing to go.
I don’t know what today has in store for me. I guess I’ll find out when I get there.
