I played the Roots Music Canada anniversary bash over the weekend at the Tranzac Club in Toronto. Finding myself on stage, and backstage, at a club I first played about twenty-five years had me asking again: What am I going to do with my life?
I’ve been asking myself that forever, especially when it seems like I’m going in circles. Still, the question has never had an obvious answer for me, and now I think I know why. I’ve always understood that the “life” in question is in the future.
But what if the life in “what are you going to do with your life” isn’t the life yet to come, but the life already lived? The question then becomes, what are you going to do with your existing self? Your successes, your strengths, your gifts? .
This way of thinking focuses on the known life lived, not the unknown life-yet-to-be-lived. Instead of emphasizing the decreasing time remaining, it emphasizes my increasing experience and momentum.
Now, “what am I going to do with my life” is actually “what am I doing with my life”. And that has an easier answer.
What I’m going to do… what I’m doing… and what I’ve done… are one.
No wonder the stages of my life (and the backstages, too) keep coming around again.
Stage pic courtesy Shawna Caspi.