The Courage to Leave

When I was in grade school in the early 1980’s, I was completely in love with words. Sentence diagramming and grammar, writing, literature and poetry were my favorite topics in school, poetry especially. In particular I liked the poetry of e.e. cummings, Robert Frost and Theodore Roethke; I favored writing that was austere yet full of feeling. I still do prefer a writing style that is stripped to the bone, saying a lot with a little.

At some point during those years, I hand-copied from a book a poem by Theodore Roethke, a poem called “The Waking”. I still have that piece of paper, some thirty-five years on, one of the few mementos from my childhood, tucked away in an old pine box.

I could not have told you back then why I kept that paper through all the years, why I never threw it out; only that I connected to it on a visceral level from the first time I read it. Only that it was important. The words mattered to me. The meaning had impact. The opening lines are –

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

And it closes with –

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

These days I don’t need to go and pull that old piece of weathered, creased paper out of the wooden box; I can google the poem anytime, but I still do go back to that paper, more so than anything to remember who I once was.

You see, I recently left an employer after 18 years. Yet I had started my own business over four years ago.

I have known since I started my company that it was something I wanted to do more than anything, exclusively… eventually. Maybe. When the time was right. When I had enough experience. When I had enough money saved. One of these days. When I was comfortable.

The prospect of relying solely on me as a source of income was a terrifying one. The fear held me back. I did not want to let go of the security of a steady paycheck. Having grown up in extreme poverty, financial security for me is a life raft on the open sea. Security, in general, is extremely important to me; I am not a natural risk-taker.

In retrospect, I saw that as an employee of a large company, with each structural reorganization every few years, I was essentially engaged in a game of Russian roulette. Sometimes I made out well and sometimes that re-org didn’t impact me at all. But with this final one, the result of a merger, I finally met the bullet. And with it my feeling of security was forever shattered. Since then, it has dawned on me:

Security is an illusion. All of us are in a similarly precarious situation, whether we perceive we are or not.

So once I came to realize, after much reflection, that I would be no worse off for it, I opted to invest in real estate full-time, to take control of my own livelihood. I have reasoned that if my own natural ability and talent have gotten me through a three-decade career so far, then it will be enough – I will be enough – to carry me through another two. My situation is no more or no less precarious than it was before and understanding this is what finally gave me the courage to leave a place I no longer wanted to be.

So here I am on my own. That twelve-year-old who copied that poem from her text book is nearly fifty. And I don’t know how this new game will play out.

But, I know that I have always learned by going where I have to go, and that indeed – this shaking keeps me steady, I should know.

The Waking

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.