Living in the Void

The spiritual leader at a community I belong to likes to use the phrase, “living in the void.” This notion resonates with me so much lately as I continue to move deeper into a life as a writer. After 17 years of full time work with the same company, I changed to a part time schedule in September. Let me tell you, the first couple of weeks, I was struck by an unexpected insecurity that made it feel like I was walking on water but that at any moment, I would sink below the surface. Who did I think I was that I could walk on water? In the current economy, I was opening myself up to greater risk in being laid off by going part-time, wasn’t I? And considering my history of cancer and the need for healthcare, which keeps me tied to a corporate employer, wasn’t I being foolish, losing the benefits of short term and long term disability? And the reason that I was doing all of this…to concentrate more on my writing and to make up the loss in my hours at the company through income I would make in my writing. What the hell? Was I crazy? I had not had anything published since college and even then, it was 3 or 4 poems in various university literary magazines that paid me nothing.
Months into this experiment, I don’t feel any more confident about my job security or the scary possibility of a cancer recurrence, and I have come to the hard realization that I won’t be immediately paid for my writing. In fact, these couple of months have felt unstructured, unfocused and without much “work” to prove the loss of self-worth that my previous corporate identity allowed me. But I am more comfortable sitting in this place, sitting in the void, to use my spiritual leader’s words. I lived in the void going through my treatments for brain cancer, trusting that I was making the right decisions based on the information from my doctors and other experts. Perhaps, the experience of a health crisis prepared me to be able to take on the risks that I am living in now. And ironically, it was the health crisis that spurred me to make such a radical change (at least it was radical for me), as I was forced to realize that I am not going to live forever, and maybe not even as long as you.
It was in college, when I was studying for my Creative Writing degree, before I took the path of safety and security in the corporate world, that I first picked up the Tao Te Ching. It taught me how to let go of the religious structure that I grew up with, with all of its neat answers and to live in the complexity and contradictions of life. I remember hearing a friend’s interpretation of his own reading of the Tao: that it was the space between life’s moments that provide the real meaning, those times of waiting for the next great thing to happen. It is the moment between breaths. It is the time between moments. I started to notice these gaps, to allow in the undefined, unknowable mystery of them, to sink into the nothingness of them; I was surprised to find myself comforted.
It is these open spaces that have taught me the most and have allowed me to move forward in my life. As I sit in the void of my current situation, of no longer being the “corporate man” and not yet having the credentials of the writers I admire, I trust that although I will sink below the surface at times and not be able to see where I am or where I am going, that it will be the lessons of the void that guide me.
What lessons have you learned from living in the void? Please drop me a line. I would love to hear.