Cari-bein'

Foolproof? Fail-proof!

"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" That's written in the spiral notebook we keep next to the laptop. Just came across it flipping through the pages looking for something else. Only problem is, I can't remember where I saw it to attribute it. But it gets right to the point, don't you think? It's a question I (and we) need to be posing to ourselves daily (hourly?!) as we prepare to embark on a new adventure (as yet unformed!)

Last Sunday, boyfriend said (okay, wisely) that we needed to pin down WHERE we're going to move next year. (Do we have to?!) We knew the general area where we were headed, but hadn't picked a town. (And it will be a town, rather than a city this time. Where we live now is the first TOWN the boyfriend has lived in, having spent his previous 37 years in the same city.) We sat down side-by-side in front of the laptop and got busy looking at basic things like demographics. (I would hope that diversity would be a desirable trait to anyone, but it's particularly a priority for us as an interracial couple...and in our concerns for his biracial child.) The area we've chosen has a very low African-American population (especially when you remember that we live on an island with a primarily black population) but that's just one of our concerns. We narrowed it down to one (okay two) towns. Let's call those towns 1 and 2. But the other night I really started thinking about town 3, which is a university town. I started ticking off in my mind all of the advantages that a university town would have for us (and for his son). The three towns in question are all just down the road from each other, so it's not like we have to make a huge either-or choice before we even land on the mainland. We can go there and scope out the area and pick the right spot.

Then I realized that maybe we'd been going about the whole process bass-ackwards. Instead of looking at what the town has to offer us, we need to decide what we want from a town and see which one closest meets those criteria. Sounds like semantics, but really it's not. It goes back to that great question: "What WOULD I do if I could not fail?" WHO WOULD I CHOOSE TO BE in the next chapter of my life? And will our next location support that person? Because that's been the problem for me with living where we do now--this is not the right environment for someone like me. It doesn't feed my soul. It relaxes my body (and that's important, too) but it doesn't ignite my imagination or inspire my creativity. But it has been a crucial step in my growth process. By stripping away so much stress, it's allowed me to become much more focused on my inner self...and therefore have a much more focused inner life. And for that I'm grateful.

posted by Marilyn @ 7:14 AM