#56: Closer to fine.
Searching for the right answer and finding myself.
Dear reader, I’m coming back to myself after an emotionally exhausting but connection-affirming week of life and death anniversaries. Thank you for your words of wisdom and support. I don’t take a lick of it for granted. You are simply the best.
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Last week I was interviewed for the Women in Leadership Podcast.
Host Angie Mezzetti, a lovely sprite of a woman with a lilting Irish accent and a masterful interview style, ran me through a gamut of topics in 30 quick minutes: How leading the kids taught me to be a better leader at work. How to move on from the physical objects tied to our no-longer-here loved ones. The power of ritual. The building blocks of resilience. (You can listen to the full podcast here.)
The interview closed with a rapid-fire round of five questions. What are my favorite pearls of wisdom? My thoughts on sustainability? The best bit of financial advice I’ve ever received?
And then the last question: What is your go-to song that energizes and motivates you?
“That’s easy! Even before The Barbie Movie craze, it was ‘Closer to Fine’ by the Indigo Girls.”
My affinity for this ear worm reaches back three decades.
I can’t pinpoint the exact day it came into my life… Like a sense of deja vu, it feels like it's always been there.
Whenever it was, "Closer to Fine" hooked me with its bold message:
The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.
In the first sentient decades of my life, I was a seeker of the right answer — or the definitive, as the Indigo Girls sing. If I could only find that sure-to-exist right answer, I could ensure my life was headed in the sure-to-exist right direction.
Its litany of locales where ‘right’ answers might be found — I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains, I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains — felt like the many fruitless searches I’d already undertaken in my young life. But I was stubborn. Neither the failed searches nor lyrics of the song could talk me out of my certainty that just around the next corner, I would find my ironclad definitive.
Oh, to be so young and so sure.
Even on October 18th, 1998, I remember singing my heart out to Track #1 on the Indigo Girls CD as I bopped down I-395 to a hotel in Arlington. I was meeting my bridesmaids to get ready for The Big Day.
Maybe I just wanted a catchy chorus and familiar words to sing along to, drowning out some wedding day stress?
Or maybe I could see into my own future in ways I can’t explain?
Eighteen years later, "Closer to Fine" took on an entirely new meaning in my life…
After Mike died, ‘fine’ seemed like an aspirational state I would never achieve. I was as likely to become the $1B Powerball winner or be selected for the first manned space flight to Mars.
By then the song was available to me with the swipe of a finger. I added it to a seven-song playlist entitled ‘Mikey’ weeks after his death.
In the stanza, I’m trying to tell you something ‘bout my life. Maybe give me insight between black and white, I found encouragement to open — to share my pain with my friends and allow them to help me puzzle through my thorniest moments.
In the refrain, the best thing you’ve ever done for me, is to help me take my life less seriously. It’s only life after all, I was able to see that laughing again, amidst even the most tragic of circumstances, was not only acceptable but essential.
And then there are these words:
There’s more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line.
I had sang along to them so many times before. I had used that phrase — “more than one answer” — often.
But now the question before me was so much bigger. Could I side-step the answers that society was giving me and be willing to walk into the wilderness, searching not for answers, but for…? What? If ‘fine’ was not the destination but a byproduct of not searching for it, what was I actually looking for? Didn’t matter. Could I just search, letting my intuition guide me toward some mythical land that an 80s hit had promised me existed?
Spoiler alert: yes. Grief, after crushing me, liberated me to try anything and everything.
Ok, I realize what I’m doing here (yet again).
Beating my surrender-to-the-mystery drum. But is anyone listening? Is anyone willing to actually try it? All I am trying to do is destroy one of our fundamental human beliefs — that we can plan and control our lives, ensuring everything turns out fine… via a blog post.
As absurd and repetitive as it sounds, I’m sticking to it. Because there is something here.
The collective myth that promises green pastures to the end of our days as long as we stay on the right path, has three major flaws:
You won’t ever find the right path because it doesn’t exist.
Even if you somehow found said path, you’d get knocked off it before you made it near “happily ever after” (which also doesn’t exist).
In chasing the mythological Right Answer, we miss our very real clues.
What makes your day better, every time you do it? What project or hobby makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning? How would you spend your time if should’s took the backseat and you focused your energy on getting the most out of life.
Oh no, not another self-help guru telling me to “follow my bliss”. That sort of advice is for people who don’t have bills.
When did we forget about nuance, people??
It’s not black or white; saving for the future or blowing the entire 401k on a trip to New Zealand; planning everything or planning nothing.
It’s about making your life work for you, rather than looking for someone else to tell you how to do it (me included!).
There are so many experts telling us the “right” way to care for our families, careers, health, futures. Believe me, I’m trying to read all the books, and am falling deeply behind. So let’s stop looking for the “right” way, and instead embrace the dance of exploring and revising and discovering our way.
Maybe it’s too mundane to make a good post, but I’m going to say it anyway.
There is no universal, one-size-fits-all, “right way” to win at the game of life.
We have to piece it together ourselves, little by little. Sample, distill, mix patterns, projects, purposes. Get super close to finding your sweet spot of fulfilled, satisfied, tired-but-in-a-good-way at the end of each day… And then start again. Because you’ve changed, so now you need a new method for the new you that woke up this morning.
The sooner you embrace this messy process, the sooner you might find you actually enjoy it. It’s like play but in a grown-up suit. Another small bonus: when we start finally tending the seeds of our true passions and interests, our life has a way of bursting into bloom.
In my own life, for example, I am currently exploring the paths of meaningful connection with my colleagues and team-members, being vulnerable in this newsletter, and working up a sweat surrounded by the trees of Great Falls. Naturally, my work family is tighter and more productive than it’s ever been, this newsletter continues to swell in subscribers, and both my cardiovascular and mental health are off the charts for a 55-year-old widow.
What brings me joy now is exploring the questions of life — what matters most to me; how can I live each day fully; what helps me enjoy my fleeting time — rather than getting a gold star for picking the right answer.
And in doing so, I find more of myself. Pieces that I cut off or ignored because I thought they weren’t the “right” way to be.
Maybe that’s the entire point of “Closer to Fine” — the truer we are to ourselves, the easier everything gets.
It makes sense; in the wilderness, you may not find the right answer. But you’ll discover what really matters… to you.
Getting lost on purpose,
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If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:
#17: Mystery is my religion. We can’t escape chaos. But we can reframe it.
#42: Made to heal. Practicing what I preach when faced with an empty nest.
#46: It’s all possible now. Awakening to freedom at the top of the world.
#48: Allowing reality to be on your side. Surrender, the hard way and the easy way.
#51: Choosing the road less traveled. A life of your own is worth the unknown.
Love this, Sue. I'm endlessly entertained by the fact that much of the human race expects things to stay the same. Like the seasons do. Like children do. Like anything does, right? LOL. NOTHING STAYS AS-IS! And thank gawd for that. We would be so bored. And how could we appreciate anything if we didn't lose something/some of the time? And saying that is not to minimize grief or loss or pain. But we will not escape this life without that experience. Might as well be present to it, whether that loss is ours or another's. If there was a recipe for life, someone would've made billions off it, and we'd all be living easier. Instead, we get to choose being closer or farther away from fine. And the rub, there, is it's our choice. Lead the way, Sue. xo
Belted out this song by myself in the car for months when I first had the album/cassette/CD? Anyway-it is a great one for accompanying confusing times and you wrote a wonderful piece describing that. Thanks!