sunny day thoughts

Making and beholding beautiful things brings me such joy.

When this is what makes your heart sing, it’s challenging to settle into a typical career or traditional life path. I’m figuring it out as I go, now that I’ve graduated. Some days it feels absolutely crushing to realize the necessity of a job, of routine, of saving and planning. Some days I am able to see the light and wonder of the passing days and to be grateful for my job, my community, and this time living back at home in VT.

I heard in a podcast recently that there is freedom in belonging. That’s a concept that feels so nonsensical to me at first glance.

As an ENFP, Enneagram 7, I crave freedom. Freedom to choose, to explore, to come and go and keep all the doors open to options and adventures and life paths. Committing to one plan, spending my days at one job, budgeting for one new thing at a time and being fully involved in my present life, not thoughts of a future one are daunting tasks for me. I want to try and be many things in many places with many people.

I also want to dwell wholly and know the ins and outs of my loved ones’ lives, to hold their most cherished and challenging moments with them and savor the undramatic time in-between. Coffee cups and nights on the couch, seasons shifting in the sun as I listen and watch.

There’s a kind of living that happens best at high speed, new information flying at you from every angle, preferably in a different language, climate and culture. Drop me in an ancient Italian hilltop town at the entrance of a dim cafe and I’ll gladly enter and absorb each moment with overwhelmed delight; I’ll wander the winding streets with camera filling fast and learn the history and the present all in one morning’s chapel service that I can’t understand in a building saturated to the point of crumbling with frescoed worship and time’s stains. Here, welcome is the required attitude and adventure is around every corner.

There is also a type of living that is equally full, full of detail, of previous knowledge. The mental maps unfurl and write themselves as new experiences build on old, expectations are met and unmet, peoples’ stories are told and heard and remembered for the next meeting. Gardens shrivel and grow, perennials are noticed over and over and over. Presence is key here, holding and holding, allowing time for the senses to fill and the changes to be as slow-creeping as the day’s light, stretching and snapping in hours and cycles, rather than brisk seconds.

There is freedom in belonging. Freedom? Really?

But maybe it’s true. Maybe there are different types of freedom, too.

The crush of opportunity can be crippling. I find myself these days balancing a myriad of dreams in my hands and not being able to progress with any of them for fear of failing, of not being ready, of having to drop one to do another. I could go anywhere, try anything hypothetically as a single young adult with a manageable amount of debt and no lease or career tethering me. I’d have to do it alone, though. And the risks would be substantial.

In having a community, there is support while taking risks. Being consistently present through employment can bring connections and relationships and new opportunities. A home base to jump from and return to relieves the mind from problem-solving the basics so that more interesting pursuits can be investigated.

Perhaps learning appreciation is the first best step, practically speaking.

I think of this as I retrace my steps hour on hour at the cafe where I work, observing the customers I’m coming to know as friends. I think of this as I walk the dirt road I grew up on, remembering, loving. I think of this now, as I plan and create while making space for contentment to grow here.

I think there is also a deeper significance to the concept of freedom in belonging. Regardless of where I am or what my work is, I am known and loved and never alone and my purpose is connected to that belonging I have through faith. Wherever I go and whatever I do, as long as I am living as a citizen of Heaven, I can release the weight of expectation, success, and perfection.

This gives me the space to cherish life’s intricacy: the ways the people in my life, my creative work and various activities and dreams all meet and are beautiful.

The freedom in belonging is, surprisingly, sweet.

With love,

Soph

San Giovanale in Orvieto, Italy