What Is a Meaningful Life?
“Embrace the creativity and don’t care about the result. It’s better to be a beginner till the end of life than waiting forever to be perfect”
~Elizabeth Gilbert
While working as a special education teacher, I dreamt of living a writer’s life. Not for fame or fortune, but to be able to spend my days reading important work, attending workshops and writing seminars, being artistic, and using my creative voice. In retirement I’m doing all of that, and more.
The definition of a meaningful life is one of positive functioning, including satisfaction, happiness, hope, and a higher level of well-being, according to Wikipedia. Good to know the answer to one of life’s essential questions can be found online, and that I’m actually on the path to living such a life. Being a slow learner, it has taken several ass-kickings for me to catch on.
Writing the first draft of my novel at 4:30 am before going to work was exciting, but everything after the first draft has been lonely, challenging, repetitive, and soul sucking. (Okay, maybe not everything, but it has not been easy to finish the damn book.)
I’m reminded to be careful what I wish for as I remember various jobs that looked fun from afar. One example is when I decided to be a rural route mail carrier in Kentucky. This experience was before electronic scanning was implemented to help with accountability. Back when I delivered the mail I was required to wander around trailer parks and locate residents to sign for their food stamps, and disability checks, “Missy you’re running late today, I been awaitin for ya!”
Being hot, cold, wet, windblown, or all of the above was part of the job description that began at 6:00 am with sorting, slotting, and loading mail into an old beat up jeep. To my dismay, most of my colleagues wore some type of brace, sling, or stabilizer on an injured appendage, and worst of all mail delivery was never canceled for black ice on the roadways.
On more than one occasion I found myself face to jowl with a dog who either wanted me to leave or stay and play. And, if I arrived late from my route, no matter what the circumstance, a stern faced supervisor clutching a clipboard snarled a reprimand. I preferred negotiating with a rottweiler than a postal employee on a power trip.
I was able to handle “the fun” of being a rural route carrier up close and personal for three years. Instead of “going postal,” I returned to the classroom where snow days and summers off seemed like a bonus.
It has taken me twelve years to finish my novel. I hid it for long periods of time and tried to forget the manuscript residing in the bottom dresser drawer. I often wanted to burn it. Then, I would find myself working on yet another rewrite in the middle of the night.
I guess I’ve been living a writers life all along because in order to have stories to tell I to had experience a traumatic childhood in a dysfunctional family on the Pine Ridge, join the U. S. Navy, marry and have three kids who were teenagers at the same time, work countless jobs in addition to teaching students with disabilities, divorce my wayward husband, move to Maui, the Czech Republic, and other far flung locations.
Finishing this book was like being pregnant for twelve years, and I’m anxious to finally deliver, but I ask myself, “What if it’s an ugly baby and people make fun of it’s big ears?”
Another lingering question in the back of my mind is, “What if nobody reads my novel?” A scarier thought is, “What if everybody reads it?”
The most important question is, “So what?”
