Inside the Bubbles
On finding your passion
“And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire —
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.”
-Edgar Lee Matthews, Spoon River Anthology
The regret is palpable. It bubbles up unexpectedly. It suddenly bites me when I am nearly asleep or it tries to steal my breath when I am dreaming. Other times it is almost imperceptible but still lurks just below the surface as I float aimlessly through the years.
My grandmother was acquainted with this dilemma. She ignored it at first, then swept it under the rug but her vacuum found it and couldn’t suck it up. Later she fought it with pure spite and I watched it harden her until the line between her eyebrows was permanent.
So I know that the only way to get rid of it is to take action not against it but with it. Allow it to guide me towards my purpose. I don’t have the luxury of steering in any direction I choose; that ship sailed long ago. I may still be the sailor but regret is the old rudder that I can only push so far.
I can be neither casual nor cavalier. If I move too fast, the chance to find out what I’m meant to be will burst like a fragile bubble, never to be seen again.
Therefore I must seek out small bubbles of moments and within them, allow a pause. Bubbles never last but inside of them is where I try to visit myself every day.
So much waiting. My mind drifts and I begin to rot with inertia.
When I am four I walk the beach with my grandmother and I must wait for her because she is old and she likes to collect the shells. I try to mimic her but I am too impatient and I run ahead, laughing with abandon.
So much distraction. The accomplishments I’ve stacked up never removed the sense that I failed myself.
When I am thirty-four my grandmother dies and I fail her because I am incapable of mourning properly. She floats to me in a dream and we are on the beach laughing. She forgives me but I cannot forgive myself.
So in the bubble spaces I ponder and wait yet again for it to come to me. The thing I’m meant to do. I knew it once, but too long ago now. It was my childhood seashell I buried hastily upon reaching the shore of maturity and eagerly forgot.
In time the sand shifted to reveal it but it was too much to look at naked in the harsh light of day. I buried it anew.
Yet even if I build a castle on top of it to hold it in, the castle will erode overnight with the tide.
I equally long for it and fear it. So therefore I ignore it. Hence the dilemma.
And then I fall out of the boat.
Only the surprise of this moment, at the intersection of restlessness and mediocrity, does the answer appear with sober clarity:
I feel a tug on my sleeve and look back to see a young girl in overalls, hair in plastic barrettes. She is on the precipice of puberty, just before adolescence plunges her headfirst into the sea of self-doubt from which many never recover. The sea whose leftover foam touches my toes far too often even now. This girl still knows herself and her truths. She fixes me with a pointed gaze that I recognize because it is the one I give to people before telling them something important. In a soft but earnest voice, she simply says: “Write.”
Then the bubbles escape to the water’s surface and so do I. Nothing is trying to steal my breath and I take deep inhalations and swim to the shore with ease. As I climb out of the water I notice that sand has collected in the rolled-up cuffs of my overalls and there it is, my seashell, bathed in brilliant sunlight.
Almost as though it had been with me the whole time.
