Against The Grain
It takes a lot of courage to live against the grain, to follow a different drummer than all your friends or buck the council of parents to “make something of yourself.” Maybe it’s not so much courage as it is vision with a touch of stubbornness. Do I dare say it is divine calling?
In any case, there are always a few people in any community who are ‘different,’ who live according to a muse no one else hears.
This was true of Michael. He lived down the street when I was a teenager. Even though he came from a solid middle-class home that encouraged him to go into law, Michael instead left his Jewish heritage to became a Quaker and spent his life growing food for people who were hungry.
He and his partner, Suz, were never married, much to the chagrin of his parents, and they chose to live on the outskirts of life, both literally and figuratively. They had met at Woodstock as teenagers and never really left.
Are you old enough to remember the beatniks? Perhaps you were one of them, letting your hair grow and living out of a backpack.
I would never have been identified as a hippie growing up, but I had two personas. Openly I was busy “making something of myself,” ie going to school and finding my way in the world.
My hidden, hippie, side had friends like Michael. They were vegetarian, pot-smoking humanitarians who wore tie-dyed clothes and drank kambucha.
In the 1960’s they resisted the VietNam war, making plans to register as concienscious objectors…or move to Canada.
I silently applauded them.
And I yearned to have the courage to live against the grain while the rest of our generation actively pursued education and occupations that focused on wealth building.
I was caught in the middle, between parents who only wanted what they thought was best for me, and a simple life in which I owed no one anything. I believed the earth would supply all my needs.
As a young single mother, I was privileged to live for more than a decade in simplicity, though I lived that way more out of necessity than intention in my little humble country home.
In time, most of us find a path somewhere between our rebellious heart that wants to change the world and our frightened heart that wants to run away from it.
I believe we have the same or similar forces in our hearts as we age, and our challenges are similar. It’s no longer a question of being drafted to war.
It’s whether we will be conscripted to serve our final years in a nursing home and how to avoid that.
It’s not a choice between tie-dyed t-shirts and smoking pot. We pick through closets and drawers for something that will stretch to fit, and leave substances that alter our balance or vision alone in favor of a cup of tea.
Today, my life doesn’t appear to the world to be against the grain or off the grid. I am comfortably ensconced in a middleclass retirement community, engaged in activities typical for someone in their later years: reading, walking, visiting…oh…and something called blogging!
But I still live against the grain.
I find myself doing what I wasn’t encouraged to do when I was young.
For my mother, an underlying value was that of status. Anything I was interested in that had potential for fame and fortune she supported with enthusiasm.
And the cost for this in my soul was great. I was reluctant to listen to my muse, to follow my heart, to “live against the grain.”
Of course, for decades, I didn’t even know I had a muse. The inspiring energy in the universe whose main purpose is to stimulate creativity and artistic expression was hidden beneath application forms for a more practical education.
For several reasons it took me 34 years to complete my college education. I even bought into the line that an inner saboteur was thwarting my goals and lining up life events that kept me from finishing school. This may have been true.
But something else was stirring. What was it? Have you felt it, too? I have labeled my inner restlessness as curiousity and creativity. If my mother were alive today she would call journaling or writing poetry a waste of time.
I never thought of myself as particularly creative. I needed to color between the lines. But that was when using crayons.
When it comes to ‘living’ I have always been outside the lines! Over the years when others would be doing a 9-5 and upgrading to the suburbs, I was retreating to an isolated farm house to raise chickens and milk goats.
When most people are sleeping in, I treasure the stillness before dawn. I am apt to be writing poetry while everyone else sleeps.
I am of an age when most of my friends travel or knit mittens while following a favorite TV series. I have signed up for more courses on how to manage the tech issues of a website and even how to create a podcast. My muse never sleeps!!
Living against the grain can mean different things at different stages in life, but I have come to appreciate that it has little to do with outer rebellion against the status quo, and a whole lot to do with listening to our muse—a voice that will guide us safely into living a full and meaningful life if we would listen.
I invite you to explore how living against the grain is calling you.
Reading TheReflectivePen is one terrific way to live against the grain. Sign up here before you forget…
