Lately I’ve been thinking about how the book Off the Map speaks to my life just as much as the struggles of Helen Fielding’s recently returned Bridget Jones. Part of me wishes to set off for a squat in rural France while another part thinks that perhaps a nice flat with 2 toothbrushes by the sink would be perfect. Unfortunately, this is a running theme.
At times that makes me just want to through my hands up and quit, in the hopes that when left to their own devices, my arty political side and my neurotic romantic side will meld into someone more whole: neurotic and tender-hearted yet politically and creatively aware. However, for the past decade they’ve continuously battled it out for the top spot, rendering me wondering if perhaps the real problem is the way I view situation.
Perhaps the real problem is that I dared to listen to all the necessary punk rock dogma and need to self-label in the first place. Because not only am I equal parts radical activist and makeout queen and romantic nerd. I am also somewhere in between the preferred definitions between crafter and artist and academic and writer. Each time I have to fill in a tiny box labeled: “occupation” my face gets all squinchy and I break out into a sweat.
Does that mean I have to pick one over the other? And if I do, does that mean that choice is my preferred label? Or should I given them all equal status and smoosh them into the box leaving it illegible? As I get older I find myself blurring lines more and more, not becoming more complacent- instead becoming less able to mold into someone else’s system of definition.
What do you call yourself when you blur the lines? Because the answer has got to be better than something pre-contrived just for the sake of simplicity. Because as humans, we’re not simple. We exist more fully within a broader spectrum, one that our self-imposed labels often tend to obscure.
As I begin Off the Map, I’m pondering over these questions. Then right after the Preamble, there is:
Off the Map: This is what it means to be an adventurer in our day: to give up creature comforts of the mind, to realize the possibilities of imagination. Because everything around us says no you cannot do this, you cannot live without that, nothing is useful unless it’s in service, to gain, to stability.
The adventurer gives in to tides of chaos, trusts the world to support her- and in doing so turns her back on the fear and obedience she has been taught. She rejects the indoctrination of impossibility.
My adventure is a struggle for freedom.
As I was reading it, I added “and self-acceptance and creativity” to the last sentence. Because the only reason why I view my life contradictory or problematic is because I allowed myself to see my life as something that needed to fit inside a tiny box. When all I had to really do was open my eyes and realize that the box has no walls.
okay, that blew me away.
1: It’s a lonely path. Living in this world as an adventurer. So many people don’t have the imagination or courage or something to join you.
2: Last time I had to write down occupation, which was today, I called myself “free agent.”
3: Freedom is more important to me than anything else in this world. I love my kids, I love my Love, but freedom is It.
4: I always want there to be Others. Others who will share the adventure. And I don’t know if that is healthy, cause the best we can ever do is walk alongside each other for awhile and then part ways and that sometimes breaks my heart. (plus see #1)
5: There is no box!
“The adventurer gives in to tides of chaos, trusts the world to support her- and in doing so turns her back on the fear and obedience she has been taught. She rejects the indoctrination of impossibility.”
YEAH