Buckle Up

The Future is Happening Now

I’ve said it all before. It’s always the same. Always. Only, as I get older, the excitement is equal to fear. Decades ago, there was only resistance. Now, I’m not so resistant, I’ve learned to trust my intuition and go with it, but damn if fear hasn’t become a thing. Of course, those are the same thing, just shape-shifting and perception. Change is back on my doorstep.

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”  - Anatole France

I didn’t see this coming. Others probably did. In retrospect, it’s probably obvious. After all, that’s what studying story has taught me: there really are always only a certain number of endings.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” – TS Eliot

I have baggage. Emotional and physical. I’ve spent the last three years removing things from my home. Books, mostly. Regularly considering what I would ship to Italy. Very little. Again, books, mostly. Emotionally, I want to believe I’ve released a lot. Still, there’s a lot left, and it travels with me everywhere.

I’m going to miss certain things. I’m frugal, yes, and still, I have my indulgences.

Like stopping at the thrift store. I’m better these days. I rarely stop at garage sales now. Decades ago, this was a serious Saturday morning sport. And sure, my wedding dress was bought at a yard sale this spring, but that was purely by chance. Since I’ve lived in Tulsa, the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store has been my regular haunt.

To my credit (because obviously I feel the need to justify), I no longer stop just because there’s one in the area. Now I only go when I need something. Funny how often I need something. A basket for storing things, or a gift. A chair for sitting in the yard. The idea is to always be on the lookout for what you might eventually need because you can rarely find it when you really do need it. This compulsion is worse when I’m creating a home, though again, I’ve been dismantling a home for the last few years, even while living in it. Now, that is changing. I’ll be needing things again.

The truth is, I’m freaking out a bit. Which is to say, I fully recognize my life is about to change in a BIG way. And while I’ve had lots of change in my life, rarely does that change rest on another person. Involve another person. Even moving to Italy: while Tom certainly made that closer to reality with buying the house, that was still my move, my decision. I fully expected to do that alone. I’ve been planning to do that alone, even wanting to do that alone. To be alone. I mean that. Honestly. I want to be alone in Italy. Have Italian friends, of course, but essentially be alone.

In part because I want a break. I want silence and space to unpack my mind. And also, I suppose, to challenge myself. Can I do it? Do I have the courage and the grit necessary to start again?

My big trip in 2020 was exactly this. I hadn’t traveled outside of the country since Ethiopia in 2011. I wasn’t sure I could still do it. Could I navigate in a foreign land without knowing the language? I was scared. But instead of holding me back, the fear propelled me forward. I knew the life I was living was not the life I wanted. The only way to have the life I wanted was to move through the fear, do the hard stuff, and step outside my comfort zone. I needed to go to Italy. I needed at least six weeks away. I needed at least part of that trip to be unplanned, unorchestrated, improvised. And I needed to go exactly when I did. Sure enough, the universe responded. Four months in Italy at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic is about as unplanned and improvised as it gets.

But let’s not get carried away. Improvisation is not my thing. I think quickly on my feet but in general, I’m a planner. Planning is my comfort.

This year, 2023, is one big improv.

I feel like I’ve been here before, but it was always the minor league. This time I’m in the show. This is it. I’m excited as heck and scared as shit.

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Years ago, I heard someone say that we all want our future to happen right away yet when it shows up on a jet plane, we say we’re waiting for the bus.

Mary Chapin Carpenter nails this perfectly in a song that’s been dear to me for decades: Why Walk When You Can Fly?

I’ve never been able to see the future and have always been envious of those who can. Like when Will says to Abby that he’s waiting to ask her out because once he does he knows that’s it, his life will never be the same, nothing else will matter. (From the movie Life Itself)

While I can’t see the future, there are a few things I’ve been sure of. Absolutely certain. No idea how those things would turn out, how they would unfold, only that they were meant to happen. In semi-recent history, that includes earning my doctorate, going to Italy in 2020, and marrying Tom.

That last, most recent, thing… well, I didn’t see how that would change my life so much. But, as it turns out, the future has arrived on a Concorde. And I’m on the tarmac. Do I have the courage and grit necessary to start again? To move quickly, without as much planning as I may like, to trust my intuition and embrace my future now that it’s here? Yes. My answer is yes. Sure, I’m a bit scared. But my fear is propelling me forward. I won’t let it hold me back.

“Intuition makes you feel uncomfortable. Fantasy doesn’t. That’s how you know the feeling isn’t just wishful thinking.” - Carolynn Myss "Anatomy of the Spirit" interview, Intuition v Wishful thinking

I’m moving back to Idaho. Seriously, I didn’t see that coming. Even if others did, I never thought I would. Once there, I’ll be renovating a fifty-some year-old home. Tom and I will move in together and then work on the 97-year-old house where he has been living for twenty-nine years. And then the work begins, in earnest, on our home in Sicily.

Buckle up, Peppler. The future is happening now.