I just don't know

But let's be honest -- no one ever really knows

I just don’t know where I am supposed to go

I just don’t know what I am supposed to do

In last week’s Jumble of Sea Glass, I penned these words – a plaintive cry from my unmoored heart.

Often the words I publish on a Sunday morning were written days before. And because Jumble of Sea Glass is really a journal of my heart, a travelogue of an ongoing journey, I am sometimes in a new place by the time my words are released to the world.

It is one thing to publish a story about your time in Paris when you’ve already moved on to Lyon, but it is another to claim to the world that you have no idea about anything when you are actually moving closer to a place of understanding, and the crisis has likely passed.

I’ve not actually found any answers – that’s (spoiler alert) the whole point of this week’s missive. It’s just that I want you to know that some of the despair I published on Sunday was already lifting, and that I’m working my way towards a more restive heart space.

At least at the time of writing (date stamp, Wednesday morning).

You can also listen to Jumble of Sea Glass on audio.

I just don’t know

I’m still reading Sue Monk Kidd’s Writing Creativity and Soul. In a chapter entitled Planners and Improvisers she discusses Jung’s two psychological types: the perceiving type and the judging type.

These categories, when applied to authors, can signify whether fiction writers use an outline, or work spontaneously, letting characters lead the story.

We are authors of our own lives, and as I craft my own life pages, I am definitely of the ‘judging’ type. I want to make a plan based on good information. I want to know what is going to happen before I set out. I want to make good decisions.

And I believe, for the most part, that this way of ‘being’ has actually served me quite well in life.

My work always involved lots of planning, projecting, and predicting, and I was pretty good at it. I could make things happen. I could build organizations, inspire others to come along, and fulfill goals and missions.

But that isn’t my life anymore. Now I’m just the COO (Chief Operating Officer) of me, and my wayward heart. At 58, I’m just a little sailboat bobbing on the waves, currently tethered to a well-weathered dock.

I could write a strategic plan, with a vision and mission statement, and a 5-year work plan attached, but I am not an organization in need of governance training. A spreadsheet isn’t going to set my path. A SWOT analysis (IYKYK) won’t provide me with the answers I am seeking.

When we say we KNOW, we are just fooling ourselves. It’s time to embrace NOT KNOWING.

This was my epiphany.

I wrote this piece of prose entitled We never know during my participation in Beth Kempton’s writing circle on Monday. It came from a prompt in a poem by Nancy Paddock called Lie Down, and these specific lines:

Lie down with your belly to the ground

And then rise up

With the earth still in you

Nancy Paddock

Published in Poetry of Presence, edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson

Here is my response:

We never know

Rise up with the sun
There is still hope
There is still love

Stop fearing
Keep living
Keep loving

Not knowing is
Just being honest
We never know

Even when we think we do
We know nothing
I will accept that there is no knowing

Just being
Remembering
Creating

That’s all there is.

Are you also in that time of life where all the things you thought you knew have fallen away? Are you questioning everything? Are you building an entirely different life?

I’d love to hear your story.

JL Orr | Paradox & Sea Glass

Based in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia in Canada

You can also find me at The Travel Paradox.

When this newsletter arrives in your inbox or feed…

I’ll be camping. When this goes live, I’ll likely be outside reading my book, or on a long walk. Or maybe I’ll just be sitting quietly by the river.

I hope you are also in a happy place this weekend, or whenever you listen.

This is my river spot. I took this photo just as the sun was rising, on a chilly morning, last September.