"We shall not cease from exploration..."

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

(T.S. Eliot)

That pretty much sums up how I’ve felt over these past two pandemic years.

But maybe even before that.

There’s a sense, now in my forties, of rediscovering myself. Almost a peeling back of layers of pretense, or a changing out of costume. It sounds very cliché, I’m sure, but the farther I get in life, in my career, and in my relationships, I care less what people think of me, and care more what I think about myself.

Which is closer to how I used to be as an adolescent, even as a young teen before I started to care more about boys and friends than books and horses (and - especially - books about horses). The first, and perhaps most dramatic, of a series of shifts outward. This continued through high school, college, Peace Corps, first jobs, grad school, DR Congo, DC, Mexico City…a steady taking on of career goals and climbing of hierarchies until I reached my mid thirties, glanced back and thought, “man, I miss that work from the beginning.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve pretty much always been a Type A overachiever, straight A’s and editor in chief of the newspaper, all that nonsense. I’m not blaming puberty and boyfriends for my ambition, just tracking its upward trajectory.

Side bar that ambition may even be the wrong word, since it was never really about status or position, but ticking boxes along the way to “making a difference.” Until I realized (a) I play a small part in a very large and complicated game (see Cog in the Wheel post) and (b) the metrics I was using to measure “difference” were probably all wrong, anyway (see another relevant post).

Anyway, point being - I do feel I’m arriving where I started after decades - a lifetime, even - of exploration.

And, while beautiful, it’s also unsettling. Because it’s meant a continued re-negotiation of my self to my work, which used to contain a big chunk of my Self. At least I thought it did.

Really, who am I without the Human Rights Activist identity?

I wonder if this kind of question is why many of us overstay our time in this field, continue past our usefulness, vision blurred by fatigue, burnout, hopelessness, cynicism…and when I say “us,” I mean the people in my approximate generational cohort. You know who you are, and you know we’ve had this same conversation about people older than us, and how they should have moved out of the way long ago.

Look, I’ll be 42 in April - I’m not retiring (probably never will, on my social justice salary!). I’m just constantly asking the question:

Am I contributing? If not, where did I go wrong and what can be learned?

And wondering again and again how this constant questioning can be more meaningfully and effectively embedded in the work we do.

As Samuel Beckett put it:

Ever tried. Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again. Fail again.

Fail better.