Go where it's most fertile
I used to be so sure about what I wanted to do with my life, and I thought I knew exactly how to get there: get a book deal, get pregnant, have a baby, become a bestseller, sell the movie rights, send the kid to college, and then sit back and be happy. As you know by now, that didn’t work out—and walking that route didn’t lead to real happiness for me. So now, life is an open field, and my next steps are taken based on the fertility of the soil.
That is, I go in whatever direction will bring me the greatest personal growth.
That’s why I kneel onto the cushion to meditate at specific times, then leave the seat when ready; why I pick particular books to read and abandon others on the shelf; why I cook certain dishes and listen to certain podcasts. And most of all, why I love my partner more and more every day. Because these choices all lead to my most fertile grounds for awakening.
And so far, these grounds only yield riper and sweeter fruits of practice—even as they defy conventions.
For example, my realization that I no longer wanted to become a mother. My partner and I had tried to conceive for two full years and every time we failed, I further investigated my desire to have a baby—and found that so much of it was rooted in the false and widespread idea that a woman only becomes whole when she births a child. Or the myth that a person can only truly know love when they become a parent. Or the arbitrary Norman Rockwell standard of a family, which requires a toddler or two (or 1.94 to be exact, as of last year) to count as complete.
And the fact that I no longer lust for renown, as an author or otherwise. The vexation of public adoration, condemnation, and all-around politics just isn’t worth it. I’d rather be anonymous, blissfully unknown. When I die, I hope to be remembered fondly but briefly by a dozen or so people, burned to ashes and scattered in the wind, and then forgotten by all of the world.
And even the convention of a devoted Buddhist. There was a time earlier this year when many people thought I would ordain as a nun. I’d made a pilgrimage to the meditation masters of the Thai forest, where my understanding of the Dhamma deepened in the same way a pothole is deepened when it’s hit by a meteor. I’d come home and underwent some abrupt and drastic changes in my values and demeanor. My colleagues, teachers, and even my therapist leapt to conclusions and asked, “So are you going to shave your head and become a monk? Are you and Kyle going to split?”
But why would I do that, when my marriage is the most fertile practice ground of them all?
Because of our love, my heart now opens to give when it would previously shrink with stinginess. My heart steadies with patience when it would otherwise rush ahead in self-absorption. And my heart strengthens with courage to examine and work with its own defilements, when it would otherwise cower and hide in shame.
I have no use for conventions. Whether I fit or defy them is out of coincidence.
I am only acting out of my worthiest purpose.
That is—of course—my awakening.
“In your own way you should practice.”
—Gotama Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 4.117