At Your Service

Today, a teammate / friend posted on social media about Walpurgisnscht, the night before Beltane - they said, "It is tradition to burn what isn't serving you as we move from the dark time of the year to the light. What isn't serving you?"

That question rang my head like a bell.

Truth be told, even before the Cancer Adventure got into full swing, I knew that 2018 was going to need to be a year where I needed to make major changes. I spent the beginning part of 2017 getting a new job, the middle part of 2017 hating my new job, and the late part of 2017 slowly having more and more Crohn's symptoms to the point where I felt like I was sort of enduring my own life.

When I got the flu on Dec. 26th (the real start of the specific chain of events that led to my leukemia diagnosis and me sitting in a hospital right now getting my second round of chemotherapy), I felt it as a message from the universe. I felt like I was being told: "SIT DOWN. You've been ignoring these messages from your body and your heart, and if things need to get drastic for you to hear them, then that's what's going to happen."

(Side note: I am not saying "hey, if you ignore your body and heart, you're definitely going to end up with leukemia". But it's really hard for me not to see this as a wake-up call and an opportunity for me, personally, in my particular specific life.)

What getting cancer did was 1) raise the stakes, like, A LOT, and 2) give me time to think about what really needs to change in my life. But the problem is ... I don't really know what I want? Many, many therapy sessions, self-help books, online articles about building a life that you don't want to escape from, sessions with my journal, etc., etc. I still find it so hard to even imagine a life that feels good, that feels purposeful and full of joy, but where I also get to put on my own mask first.

To bring this back to the beginning, the concept of a life that *serves* me, and removing elements that don't serve me, sort of turned my brain inside out. Because I have an association with service that it's one-sided - I am here to serve, but I'm not meant to be served.

My first instinct to dig into this a little bit more (which I think is a technique I stole from Havi at The Fluent Self) was to literally Google the definition of "serve". (They didn't call me The Human Dictionary in high school for nothing.) And, surprisingly, there were a lot of sub-definitions that really resonated with me. There was the expected "to perform duties or services for another person or an organization", but there was also:

  • "to spend (a period) in office, in an apprenticeship, or in prison"
  • "to present (food or drink) to someone"
  • "to (of food or drink) be enough for" (e.g., "this recipe serves 4 people")
  • "to deliver a document to (someone) in a formal manner"
  • "to be of use in achieving or satisfying" (as in serving a purpose)
  • "to be of some specified use"

So my interpretation of "what isn't serving you?" can be translated / expanded to:

  • "What in my life isn't doing anything positive for me?"
  • "What in my life isn't teaching me anything that I want to learn?"
  • "What in my life isn't nourishing me / taking care of me?"
  • "What in my life isn't enough for me? What makes me feel like I'm not enough?"
  • "What in my life isn't giving me clear feedback / intelligence about what it is? What isn't communicating with me?"
  • "What in my life isn't helping me be satisfied?"
  • "What in my life isn't of use?"

Conversely, I can look at the opposite of these questions - what in my life is serving me, when I look at it from these perspectives?

I have some immediate responses, especially on the positive side, which is really encouraging - but I also know that I'll have to really break some shit down to component parts, and to really take a hard, honest look at some of my habits and tendencies, to get to a starting point of releasing / burning away some of these things. (Like, definitely "my current job" would be the answer to a lot of these questions, but I don't think I can get away with not having a job for too long - I'll need to look at what about my job isn't serving me, and what about other jobs has, to find good intel about it. And I know that my habit of not being clear with other people about my expectations is something that isn't serving me right now, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.) And then, of course, I'll need to prioritize among the (I'm sure) several things that this exercise will result in.

But this feels like a good start.