The other day, on a run, I encountered the store above in my neighborhood. I peered inside.
Rows upon rows of supplements, powders, were stacked on shelves. On the wall was a poster of very muscular people posing in small shorts and bikinis. Fascinating, I thought. The world is vast, and has all kinds of communities.
I jogged home.
My last post was about the metaphor of life as a house with many rooms. Since writing that post, I re-read an article which talks about four stages of life: mimicry, exploration, commitment, and legacy.
This article, I think, is spot-on, though I prefer to think of these stages as blending into each other rather than having clear borders. At any point in life, we each have some mimicry, some exploration, some commitment and some legacy-building going on, though the balance drastically shifts as we go from child to old person.
In my early 20s, I committed to going down the path of medical training. This big commitment took up pretty much all of my time, and my desire to explore went unfulfilled. When I finished the training path, I had more free time to explore. In the last five years, I’ve explored a lot.
Now, I see exploration’s limits: the people I meet while traveling seldom turn into real friends, serial monogamy doesn’t allow me to build a family.
I have a friend who said once, “I’ll try anything three times.” A few years ago, I’d have agreed with her, but now I realize that some things, I won’t even try once. For example, I won’t go into muscle, inc.
Why not? Am I becoming a curmudgeonly old person not open to new things? Like Sam who won’t try the Green Eggs and Ham…
No, I think it’s more that I know myself, and life, better now. I trained for and ran a marathon a few years back. This took discipline. I got satisfaction from adding on the miles and going the distance. Yet, once I completed the marathon, the satisfaction dissipated. Satisfaction is something you can’t keep.
In the past year, I’ve learned to juggle three balls. A similar pattern: practice -> struggle -> success. And then what? The satisfaction dissipates, unless I start learning a new trick.
Body building, I imagine, would follow a similar template. I have other learning projects in my life, that I’m more interested in (like learning to surf). My time and energy are limited. So, I jog past the store.
I was talking to a friend the other day about polyamory. Why don’t I try it?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I can imagine what it would be like: monogamy, but more complex. With more people to understand, feelings to manage. I’m OK not entering this room. Building one solid romantic partnership is hard enough for me.
There are some rooms of life that a require major commitment to enter the door. To explore these rooms, I have to give up exploring a bunch of other rooms. The room of starting a family is one such room.
In the book The Light of the World, the author Elizabeth Alexander describes that her husband Ficre was a good pick because he had “drank his water” before he got married. In our culture, we talk about “sowing wild oats.” These are two different ways of saying: Ficre had explored enough, and was ready to commit.
In my late 20s, I dated someone who wanted to marry and have kids. I told myself that this was what I wanted. I didn’t want the pain of breakups anymore. And subconsciously, I also probably wanted to keep up with the societal script of marriage and family, out of a sense of shame. Yet, in my subconscious, there was a strong desire to explore.
When girlfriend said: “I want to get married,” I was filled with anxiety. Ultimately, the relationship ended. And for many years, I’ve had major regret about this. I told myself stories like, “I let THE PERFECT PERSON get away.”
Yes, we were compatible in many ways. Yet in a big way, we were incompatible. I was at the stage of exploration, and she was at the stage of commitment. I didn’t have a discreet time when I’d be “done” with my exploration stage. And so, from my vantage point at almost 38, the breakup now seems wise. It would have made us both miserable if we’d have stayed together, because the relationship wouldn’t have let either of us fully do what we — in our core — wanted to do.
Seeing my life through the lens of these stages frees me from regret and shame. My ex and I were simply at different stages, and the right thing was to end the relationship, as hard as it was. It wasn’t that either of us were “bad people.”
Now, though, I feel myself leaving the stage of exploration, and entering the stage of commitment. I look at young families around me and earnestly want to be like them. Not out of a sense of shame, but out of an inherent desire. And I look at many possible adventures and “see through them.” Yes, that could be a fun experience, but what about after it’s done? Will anything be left? I ask myself.
Exploration and commitment are partners in a life-long dance. For my 20s, commitment was leading the dance (while I was in med school and residency). But exploration grew frustrated. And so, when I finished training and was able to work part-time, exploration took the lead for about 5 years.
Now, commitment wants its turn to lead the dance once again.
This dance will continue, I think, for the rest of my life.
Because that’s life. A thing that’s always changing, grooving, and unfolding.
Thanks to Avi, Peter and Nicole for conversations that led to this post.
danscreativeoulet 