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Satya Robyn reflects on purpose and vocation at 45, sharpened by the coronavirus crisis. She considers tending daily tasks with grace and using spare time for creative writing, framing these questions as an ongoing koan.
Satya Robyn reflects on purpose and vocation at 45, sharpened by the coronavirus crisis. She considers tending daily tasks with grace and using spare time for creative writing, framing these questions as an ongoing koan.
Hi. This morning I have been wondering about what I will be when I grow up. I'm 45 now. I think that counts as already grown up. But it's a question that has followed me for most of my life. Something like, what is it that I'm meant to be doing? What is my offering? Should I put my energy here or here? And it's become magnified in the way that lots of things have become magnified for lots of people with the coronavirus crisis, a kind of coming closer of suffering, suffering of other people, coming closer of mortality. And it's, um, it's not a very comfortable question. It's like, um, like when you're on a long walk and you've got a stone in your shoe and it just sort of niggles. And I was wondering just now if something about a very simple answer that I almost discount because it's too simple, which is really just doing whatever the day requires of me, and doing what the day requires of me with as much grace as possible, and then using any extra time I have to create exactly what I want to create. So the first bit is the things in our life that need to be done: the washing up, making a living, looking after people that need looking after, all those things that— those many things that appear in front of us moment by moment. To do those things in a way that that to bring spaciousness to them, to— yeah, grace is the best word I can think of for what I'm trying to say. I hope you might have some sense of the difference between a kind of grudging, resentful, or hurried, or mindless doing of the washing up to doing the washing up in a way that I can feel the heat of the water and enjoy the bubbles and just something that feels kind of clearer and more spacious about it. And the— I'm lucky enough to have some time free, not everybody does, well, we have little tiny bits maybe, and my writing career is pretty much— it's important, but it's not something I make a great amount of money from, so in a way that's a gift because it means I can really write whatever I want to write. There's no publishers screening my— what you call 'ems? I can't think of the word. And that's enough, that that's it, that's enough. So I'm just going to hold on to those two ideas for a while and see how they sit with me, that there isn't anything more complicated, that the complication is inside my head rather than actual, an actual problem. That'll be it for now, and I'm sure I will continue to talk and think about this. It's one of my koans. You may also find that the debates that you have in your head about things may have been sharpened by the current crisis, which, which can be an opportunity, can be a curse. I hope that there's new light being shed onto your own dilemmas, and yeah, hope you're doing okay. Go gently out there. Take care.
