What is a life of contemplation?

2019-06-27_11-52-58This is an ideal day, wide open, warm. I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sandals. I’ve gone for a run in the park, walked the dog, hung the laundry, and meditated in the back yard listening to the birds and the traffic.

It is possible to be quiet and still.

And yet, there is an undercurrent of anxiety. Feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame, grief, panic. When you strip away the layers of busyness, you have to look at yourself, pay attention, listen. Maybe you were busy for a reason. Maybe you didn’t want to scrutinize the uncomfortable emotions and their uncomfortable causes.

What hurts?

What a question. Oh boy. Rejection hurts. Not meeting my own expectations and hopes hurts. Feeling purposeless in my vocation hurts.

Is this true? Do you feel purposeless, directionless, or is your purpose and direction so attached to outcome that you’re standing in the way of recognizing what is before you? The here and now. Not what came before or what may come, but what is here before you in this very hour.

I come inside and draw a picture. I write this meditation.

I ask: Is my vocation, my purpose more closely related to being a writer, or to leading a life of contemplation? What connects these two points on the map inside my mind? What separates them?

A writer writes, of course, but more importantly, she publishes. Produces. Makes her ideas manifest on the page. Her work can be seen, recognized, appreciated.

What do you even call a person who leads a life of contemplation? How quiet and interior is a life of contemplation? How is such a life made manifest? Is it a life in which its purpose is entirely untethered from production, from recognition, from approval? Is it a life without notice? What would that mean?

xo, Carrie

Life flows on
Summer feeling

2 Comments

  1. gabe

    I love your blogposts.
    Today, I need to correct you.
    A writer writes… it IS about the process. You can’t control the results.
    Validation must come from within. Publication can’t be the sole reason
    we struggle with words on a page.

    Reply
    • Carrie Snyder

      Yes, you are right. Absolutely right. Thank you for the correction.
      xo, Carrie

      Reply

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