Getting Right with Your Actual Life

Louisa May Alcott, author of the much-beloved book Little Women, considered her legendary book boring; she preferred writing lurid thrillers and crime novels. After Little Women had been in print for ten years, she wrote this in her diary: "[I'm so] tired of providing moral pap for the young."

This both dismays and fascinates me, especially because that book influenced me so much as a young girl who wanted to write. How could she write something so beautiful and then reject it in that way? How could she resist what was clearly her story to tell?

I'm sure that, like me, you don't know anything about resisting what is yours to do in this life...

As a human being and a writer who longs to create a great work, I've spent a lot of my time barreling toward projects that haven't come to fruition. That's how it goes; not every idea is meant to come to pass. But in all that pushing and driving, I think about what true stories have been waiting around for me to tell; no matter how hard I resist them, they stay close by, ready for me to see them.

I read this quote over on Shutter Sisters last month and it's stuck with me:

Life is laundry.

When I say that, I don't mean that I do a lot of laundry, although I do. I just started my fifth load this week and it's only Tuesday. Still, some folks do more and some folks do less. Either way, that's not the point...

I mean life is laundry, and when you do not yet see that your life is laundry you may not see your life clearly at all. You might think, for instance, that the life you have is not at all the life you had in mind and so it doesn't constitute your real life at all. Your real life is the life you pine for, the life you're planning or the life you've already lost, the life fulfilled by the person, place and sexy new front-loading washer of your dreams. This is the life we are most devoted to: The life we don't have.*

I could fuss about and long forever for a life where I live alone, read three novels a day, and live in a spotless house. But I've made satisfying life choices that send me in another direction: living and working from home with a fabulous extrovert husband, engaging in a community of friends whom I love, and so on.

It seems like getting right with the laundry places of my life lets me relax into the life I'm actually living. And it's funny -- when you're relaxed, you feel more awake, more present, and you notice a lot more of the beauty around you...


*Excerpted from the book Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life ©2010 by Karen Maezen Miller. Available via New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com

Comments

[Lori Young]

Hey There! Just letting you know I'm reading along. :) I loved this post. xo ~ L

[Ann]

Goddess, thanks so much for posting this. It is absolutely a propos to what I'm thinking about and writing about and talking about and feeling about in my life right now. I love it. Here's to our laundry lives! xoxo

[Jennifer Gandin Le]

Hey Ann and Lori - thank you both for stopping by! I'm so grateful that you're reading along.

And SG Ann, cheers to synchronicity and relaxing into the arms of our amazing lives!

[suzi banks baum]

Well, did you write this for me? Hanging laundry is my life...considering the metaphor and the size of my load, I have a great life. Slow. Nice. Rich. Moist. Clean, eventually.
Love you, S