Hey you.
First off, as always, something from the shop – note cards. I had a high school (and probably junior high school if I look that far back) friend ask if I sold the note cards I include in pen and jewelry orders, which made me realize I should probably mention that yes, I do s. I have for years, but apparently I am THAT terrible at self-promotion. So, yes, here are the note cards. In other news, still lots of pens in the shop, and I’ve got a bunch that I’m hoping to have available by January. I set a goal of 50 items turned by the end of the year (which was two weeks away at the time) and I’m thisclose to making the goal, despite it being too cold for two days to turn anything on the lathe. (Cold hands, sharp tools, and rapidly spinning material with a tendency to explode is a terrible combination. )
And off we go.
In a world that feels otherwise unintelligible and out of control, looking for the paths connecting the stars is a very human thing to do. We’ve done it for our entire history, and along with it, arguing about who has the right meaning – who has the right map of the paths between the stars.
The thing about maps of the stars is that their usefulness and accuracy depends on where you are and where you want to go – and when. The map that worked for you last season won’t read quite right for you now, and it won’t work if you try to use it from another place. Someone else’s map, even from the same time and roughly the same place will be similar,but not the same; no one else is ever quite in the exact same place and time.
It’s taken me years of asking why, of seeking meaning, of trying to find purpose, to be able to lay out the rough and sometimes tears-stained map I’m sharing in these letters with you. It’s mine, and I am under no illusion about that – I know it won’t be yours. But my hope is that maybe you’ll recognize some of the stars. I tell you this because, despite having what seems like a pretty filled in map (so I’m told), I’ve been struggling with meaning lately. That’s a really tough spot for me to be in. See, I have spent most of my life driven by trying to understand why, by finding the meaning of those answers, and by discovering or forging purpose for them. I don’t fault myself for this, not by any stretch – it’s human – but as I’ve been gutting my entire life the last few years, I recognized that I’d been taking it to a bit of an extreme, even going so far as to use it to compensate for feeling insecure or scared.
Noticing this, it bothered me – why did I need this meaning? Why did I need an external purpose, this external something to chase after, some distant star on the horizon to follow? Where did I learn that was the purpose of living? Who benefited from my believing that? Who made this map and why?
I’ve been picking my answers apart for a bit now, and as I went through them, I started to see all the new ways seeking meaning had gone from being a map to a cage. All the ways that handing over my purpose to an external goal or point had given someone else the power to control or limit me. How needing every action or activity to meet some nebulous definition of having enough meaning, purpose, or worth was a thing learned to keep me in line, and those before me, and those before them. It wasn’t difficult for me to trace back to where I learned it, though it wasn’t a fun exercise.
It has been a slow re-learning of healthier patterns, and I’m not even going to pretend I’m anywhere near done. I still have to talk myself through taking time to do things that are only for me, things that benefit nothing other than my current or momentary contentment.(Like cooking and sleeping and organizing spaces only I will see.) I am laughably bad at it – and laughing at myself has helped it feel less like I’m having to undo something done to me, and more something good and new I get to discover just for the enjoyment of it.
In other words: I am learning to appreciate the stars without needing to see the paths between them.
It breaks my heart a little bit that I have to, but you know what the useful thing about a broken heart is? Often the only way you can get your heart out of a cage built for it is in pieces, snuck out between the bars. Not that this gives meaning to heartbreak – I can’t say I believe there’s any meaning there, and I abhor when people try to justify pain with some greater unknown purpose.
No, my friend, heartbreak just hurts, and it’s hard, and there’s often no meaning, purpose, or reason, and you are left feeling lost and adrift; sometimes the sky is so cloudy that you can’t even find the stars to find your way closer to home. Sometimes you don’t even know what home is anymore, if it ever existed. Sometimes you find yourself having to unravel and unwrap the shredded map of everything you thought was true from around the broken pieces of your heart. Eventually, the clouds clear, and the stars come back out, even if you might no longer recognize them, and there are no old familiar paths to trace between them.
At that point, I hope you find yourself telling yourself that these are your stars now, and you get to decide what they mean for you now, if anything at all.
That’s the key to it all, really: Ultimately, we make our own meaning, our own paths through the stars, even if we reference and borrow from those that have gone before and go beside us.
As we wrap up this year’s path around our star, I hope that you find the path ahead takes you places of unexpected beauty, joy, and discovery… and thank you for sharing your, our, these stars with me.
And, orbits permitting, may the paths we walk between the stars cross again,
A. Markov
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