To Build a Home

It’s a downcast Chicago morning as I duck into the indoor mall to take my morning walk.  As so many Halloween’s go, the darkness has begun to set in and we in the Midwest prepare ourselves to continuously shiver through the next six months.  My broken bluetooth dangles from my ear, half anchored by the disrupted plastic meant to keep it in place.  Spotify is blaring,  and To Build A Home comes up on my play list.

And I feel my emotions rise with the haunting voice and the melancholy piano bars.  It starts slow. There has been so much change as of late.  Some ventures ending and others beginning.  The journey from being to becoming and then back again.

The music seems to match my mood.

Peace

It’s starts ever so slowly.  The song.  Peaceful.  And my mind jaunts off to the inner turmoil that has surrounded the last few years.  It reminds me of the quietness that I long for.  The freedom from achievement and accumulation.  The tired ragged soul exhausted from one too many treadmills.  Yearning to escape the death, destruction, and fear of this durable career.  Ready to abandon accomplishment and striving and other such restless things.

Not to build a home but to live in the structure that has been hard-earned with grimy sweat and tear soaked grimaces.  And eventually the empty absence of tears.

Thoughts and emotions a jumble, the longing for quiet.  Peace.  Calm.

Building

Then the song starts to build.   The tempo quickens and the amplitude develops depth and width.  Crescendo.  And my eyes start to tear in this third-rate cut out  mall as I pass the other walkers engaged in quiet conversation or talking into the air at some unknown recipient connected wirelessly.

To build.  To build a home.  To decorate each and every room with wonder and amazement.  I let go of peace and lean towards yearning.  I want to create.  And grow.  And soar.  To find the power lying dormant in the depths of my insides and explode with imagination and creativity.

Not to run away from doctoring but to stride towards something more.  More me.  More effortless.  More joyful.

Contradictions

As the song  starts to decrescendo I find my emotions frayed.  I am coming down off the high and feebly searching for a foot hold.  The rawness of the melody encompasses me.  I am a contradiction.  Finished,  Exhausted.  Enfeebled.

Yet the restlessness remains.  Even in the quiet times.

To build a home.  For you and me.  A space of quiet and contemplation.  A place to create and continue building  without the fear and fatigue.  To create and destroy without purpose or intentionality.

To be free.

Retirement

Retirement.  Or half retirement.  Or whatever nonsensical term you decide to give this transition away from a life entangled in other’s machinations.

I have decided to build a home.

A quiet place to contemplate.  Rest.  Create.

And grow.