Originally submitted to The Exchange.
Published with permission. Names and identifying details have been changed.
I feel guilty even writing this because there is nothing obviously wrong with my life.
My marriage is good. My children are healthy. I have work I once wanted and a home I am grateful for.
I know how fortunate I am.
But lately I have had the persistent feeling that I am moving through my days without fully being inside them.
I do what needs to be done. I keep everything moving. I look forward to weekends, and then they pass in errands and recovery.
Nothing is bad enough to leave.
Nothing is broken enough to fix.
I just keep wondering whether gratitude and unhappiness can exist at the same time, and what I am supposed to do with that.
Dear Friend,
Gratitude is not a contract requiring you to stop noticing your own life.
You can love what you have and still recognize that something in the way you are living has gone quiet.
Those truths do not cancel each other out.
We often wait for dissatisfaction to become dramatic before we believe it deserves our attention.
A relationship must be failing.
A job must become unbearable.
A life must visibly break before we permit ourselves to question the way we are meeting it.
But sometimes nothing is wrong.
Sometimes something has been unattended for too long.
That may be where I would begin, not with the question of what must change, but with what has stopped receiving your attention.
What used to make you feel present?
Where in your week do you still feel like a participant rather than the person managing everything?
What do you repeatedly tell yourself you will return to later?
You do not need to become ungrateful for your life in order to become more awake inside it.
And you may not need to dismantle anything.
It is possible that the first change is much smaller than the feeling itself.
An hour that is not used for recovery.
A conversation that moves past logistics.
A choice made because it interests you, not because it is useful.
A life can be good and still need to be met differently.
That is not a rejection of what you have built.
It may be one way of returning to it.
Warmly,
Calyn
"I've become the dependable one in nearly every part of my life. Lately, I've started wondering whether I know who I am when nobody needs anything from me."
"I've told myself I'll begin when life settles down for so long that I'm starting to wonder whether I'm waiting for the right time or avoiding the possibility that I might fail."
If you are carrying a question that has been difficult to put into words, you are welcome to write.
Every letter is read. Some receive a response. If I ever believe our conversation could help others, I will ask before anything is shared.
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