falling into life

Willem de Kooning

Last week I talked to someone whose 10 year career journey I really admire. I asked her how she charted her path. Truthfully, I never applied to a single job, she said to me, I just fell into things.

That answer was both comforting and frustrating.

But when I think about it, there are certain things I fell into years ago that remain woven in the fabric of my life even now. Writing. My college degree. A large portion of my relationships. I was tugged by the strings of luck or fate. I hounded my interests. I followed things where they led.

I talk to friends a lot about how timing is everything. The right influences at the moment of great upheaval. A door open when you needed it. The right vessel, the right words.

Some people are obsessed with using brute force to warp their world into what they want it to be. Others lie dormant, waiting for their desires to materialize. I think somewhere in between the two lies the ideal strategy: you need to set things in motion, but momentum takes a life of its own.

For me at least, so much of my life has been about letting go of the outcome. Committing to the slow pace of process. Going through the slog. Letting things take the shape they should. God, I really want to wrangle and interfere. The idea of falling into things feels… unscientific. But I’ve come to see that if you don’t allow randomness or serendipity to divert the path, you end up pretty miserable when you get exactly what you thought you wanted. Humans are pretty bad at predicting what exactly will make us happy and even worse at admitting when our desires shape-shift.

Our whole lives we search for significance only to find that we can’t predict where it’ll come from next. A melody on the radio, an unlikely book, a first encounter with someone new, a stroll through an old Victorian neighborhood, getting an Italian combo from the deli. That’s the fun part. You can’t design a path with an imperfect world. The map always melts.

The journey you’re on, the ambiguity of it, the days of feeling lost, the months it took to work up the nerve — they prove that life is not just rigidity and resolution, but pliability and revision. As children we look at adults to give us structure, the green light. But the transition to autonomy is owning your own narrative. Grace. Discipline. Vision. Those are things you can only give yourself.

So, here’s to falling more into life. Like when P said: instead of imagining my life linearly, I see my life as a constant inward circle, getting closer with each turn to the center. From the poet John O’Donohue: I would love to live like a river flows / carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

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Life inputs

🌙 I’m a huge fan of Moon Lists, and enjoyed these questions this week:

5. PIÈCE DE RÉSISTANCE

A neroli candle. A perfectly boxy T-shirt. A sliver of sea glass. A parking ticket. What are the objects of the moment?

8. INCREASE / DECREASE

Identify something to move on from; identify something to amplify. 

🎤 Podcasts:

• David Senra’s Founders

• Elise Loehnen’s Pulling the Thread

📚 Books:

• Against The Odds - the autobiography of James Dyson

• The Paris Review Interviews, 1

Quote of the Week

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace, 1987

French Song of the Week