You Might Not Get an Award
Six Lessons from 10 Years of A Wild New Work
Part Five
This is part of a series to mark the 10-year anniversary of my self-employment journey. Part one: Here is the Only Place to Start. Part two: Not Easy, but Easeful. Part three: It Takes the Time it Takes. Part four: We Are Incredibly Important Specks of Dust.
Image by William Foley, via Unsplash
You Might Not Get an Award
Something I've struggled with from time to time over the last ten years is feeling jealous of others who are on more traditional career paths and receive culturally-sanctioned recognition through promotions, awards, financial abundance, etc.
I have a family member who's very successful in a traditional line of work, and I see how opportunities and money flow to her with such force. Then I look at my path and it all feels much harder and more complicated. My ego wants to flare up defensively and say, "Well, but I'm doing important work, the real work, and normal people just can't understand it." This comparison is a trap, of course, and untrue. My family member is also doing important work, and who am I to say whether she's following her calling or not?
And yet, the longing for recognition remains. That tenderness of wanting to be seen and affirmed by powerful people or institutions can quietly creep up and deflate me, even as I love the Work I get to do.
Since stepping onto this journey ten years ago, I've had to reckon with my desire to make sense to people and choose, over and over again, to stay the course that feels most aligned to me regardless of how much others can understand it. What I've found is that this Work makes sense to a few treasured people (you), and it doesn't make sense to a lot of other people. And that has to be okay, or else I'll spend too much energy trying to make sense to people I'm just not meant to be in relationship with.
Many of you know what it's like to try and explain the Work of your heart and see the other person's eyes start to glaze over. Even today, when someone asks me what I do for work, I stammer out something like "It's kind of like anti-capitalist career coaching…based on the seasons…blerg…" That lands for some people, and it doesn't for others, especially those who are deep in the currents of dominant Western culture.
Sometimes connecting with others about our callings is just a matter of finding the right language that will speak to them–it can be a communications issue, essentially. Other times, people are too invested in the status quo to hear anything that doesn't fit within it; these people aren't bad or completely detached from their soulful callings, but the dominant cultural narratives that they're invested in are.
We do not live in a Soul-wise culture.
Dominant capitalist culture does not appreciate nor understand what it is to be called, to trust in Fate, to follow Mystery, or to grow downward into the Soul of the Earth. What dominant culture understands is abuse, extraction, speed, linear thinking, and control.
When we're attempting to do our soulful Work, we are often acting counter-culturally. Soul Work can be unpopular and only recognized by the "powers that be" on exceptional occasions. The day in, day out Work of following your calling is much more likely to be derided and misunderstood, even by those who love you.
So why follow our callings then, when it can feel so lonely and difficult? For me, I do it because I know this path feeds me in a way that succeeding in capitalist culture cannot. I do it because I have to in order to feel whole and alive. I'm not willing to lose everything for it or put my children at risk, and I don't think the path requires that. But I do know that in order for my Work to unfold, I have to eschew my need to be recognized by dominant culture and the people who uphold it.
When I let go of my desire to succeed according to corporate culture or be recognized by some powerful institution, I am much more content in the richness and abundance that is already here, humble and sweet, like the smell of rain on dry Earth.
The longing to be seen by culture isn't bad, but it can be a distraction, and it takes us out of the affirmations that Life is already sending us.
Recently, I took a step toward something I'm called to do and was reminded of the kind of affirmation I truly desire. I had spent the morning working with a gift of mine that's getting stronger, and–as is often the case–that felt good but also clunky and a little scary. I wondered if I was doing it right, where would it lead, here's yet another thing that will be hard for people to understand…But I did the Work anyway, and then got up to take a break. When I came back to my desk, I looked out my window and saw a Great Blue Heron flying just overhead. I have never seen Heron around here, as there are no natural bodies of Water close by, and it felt like a huge affirmation that the Work I'd done was well met.
Later that night, at dusk, I was walking to my refrigerator and something in the backyard caught my eye. I looked out and there was a Peregrine Falcon sitting on our hammock looking right at me. Another visitor I've never seen at our home before. I stepped closer and she flew away, but I felt this to be another sign that the Otherworld was happy with my Work that day.
It's not wrong to want to be affirmed and receive recognition for walking our soulful paths, but where we look for that affirmation and recognition is really important.
I may not receive an award for teaching about the violence of capitalism or the different way of living that the land is calling us into, but I would take magical visits from Heron and Falcon over that any day.
If you know you're doing your best to explore your gifts and answer the callings of your Soul, I encourage you to ask your wise and well ancestors, Life, the land–whoever you feel connected to–for signs of affirmation. Allow them to award you with synchronicities, special visits, and joyful opportunities.
And if, like me, you still sometimes long for recognition from a culture that cannot see the value of what you're doing, tend to that longing by finding the richness already nestled on your path. Look to the ways you feel enlivened, the special twists of Fate that have blessed you, the people, human and more-than-human, who are healed through the Work you're doing.