Dear Z.,
When I was young, adults told me that I could be ‘anything’ I wanted. They were quick to present a list of potential occupations: police officer, fireman, construction worker, truck driver, perhaps a veterinarian, sometimes a doctor or a musician or a race car driver. A list for your generation will look very different, I predict.
In fact, I have no idea what the world will be like when you reach an age where earning money and paying taxes and leveraging your body and your brilliance to support your life will be of concern to you (perhaps there will still be need for public servants and medical and entertainment professionals, but who can say what greater prevalence tech, space travel, or AI will have in your world, or how much climate change might affect your daily life?). The world is changing at such a rate as humanity has never seen.
Nevertheless, the world you’re in came through here once, so maybe there’s some tracks in the mud which may prove useful for you.
There was an implicit message when I was growing up that being myself was not enough to get by in this life—I had to become something else, and whatever I did as a profession would somehow, eventually, define me as a person. I couldn’t just do commercial fishing in Alaska, for example, I had to be an Alaskan fisherman.
There is a lot of truth and beauty in that embodiment. Learning a tradecraft, or following a passion toward mastery can offer us a sense of purpose, direction, community, and indeed, identity. Sometimes, though, the real work is remaining aware of who you are, what you want for yourself, and how you’re really showing up for others throughout your process of learning and growing.
««»»
Public education prepared me for almost zero of what I would experience in the real world. Maybe ‘zero’ is not fair - it was just more true that how I learned to relate with other humans was far more consequential for my future than the content of what I was to learn in class. And I did a very poor job of learning how to relate with other humans, until I was at least in my thirties. Perhaps you will have greater success there, and many blessings to you toward that end.
«»
Then, there was the making money. School didn’t prepare me for that, either. Neither did the adults in my life. Probably because none of them really had any, and therefore didn’t need an intricate knowledge of what it was and how it worked. That’s one backward way our society has worked for a long time: ignorance and confusion in the masses consolidates power to a few.
It doesn’t have to be like that, Z. There is enough for you, and me, and her, and them, and theirs. Abundance is everywhere. Just look around and breathe and remember what your deep deep knows. Thank often. Remember that not everyone has the same access to opportunity and resources, and that you—for reaasons over which you unfortunately have little agency—may have more access than most.
««»»
For example, it is a privilege to be able to practice something that is not necessarily meant to earn an income, to do something just for the love of it, just for the way it makes you feel. There is something honorable about developing a skill, knowledge base, and way of being, from a place of curiosity, then devotion.
Not all practices will help you center, however. If avoidance is a thing you ever begin to practice, mind yourself, and what you’re avoiding. Without facing into that which ails you with your full heart, you will never be free of it.
«»
I am someone who values the pursuit of craft. My own path through writing and fishing and woodworking and fire spinning and healing work taught me that one medium is not superior to another. Feel into what what your body wants, what your heart wants, and see what happens when you lead from that place.
«»
Few people will tell you that pressuring your practice to earn you money can be a burden. It is not always the case—in fact, many things thrive with pressure, heat, and energy. Do what’s right for you. Give when it’s right to give and when it’s wanted; receive when you can feel it being offered from their center. It’s hard to know which keys will open which doors.
«»
If you ever find yourself having given too much for too long, give yourself the gift of stepping back for moments to reassess. The experience of burnout is hard when we really love the thing that led us there. Just keep coming back to what you want, and your relationships to what you do, who you’re with, and how you spend this one precious life.
««»»
Perhaps by now you’ve experienced in your body a state of flow. If not yet, you’ll know, if or when it happens. Some people say that time and space and body and mind and heart all meet at once in flow, in a beautiful motion of challenge and ease and love in which the past and the present and the future become both one and nothing. The body moves; mind, quiet; heart, engaged.
I won’t say too much more about flow here, but that to drop into it, which may or may not appeal to you, requires devotion to a practice of awareness, movement, relationship. What form your specific practice may take is a blessed mystery to me. I will be happy to welcome you into mine, for as long as it suits you to connect in that way. The teaching is simply that how we engage with our practice is how we engage with everything in our lives: relationships, work, money, play, the earth, sea, air, and fire.
««»»
A few things about me you may or may not want to know:
At 17, I was alone to figure out the world: education, career, money, finance, life. It was a bumpy ride. I worked for an audio/video installer in South Florida, and worked in the homes of the very wealthy. I was the help: I wore blue booties over my shoes to walk on Spanish tile floors inlaid with diamonds and gold, and often feared that I might have been be fired for sneezing.
It took me many years to work through the envy and resentment I carried around who gets what and why and what do you have to do for ‘success.’ Not the success I saw in those ostentatious homes, but what would it feel like, I wondered, to just go to the grocery store and not have to wonder whether we had enough money to buy the food we actually wanted to eat?
I learned to become very good at whatever I did, or at least be well-liked. It got me promotions that put me into position of greater power, which felt good, but I did not know what to do with that power, and had no one to guide me. From that place of fear and scarcity, I stole items from work and sold them. Later, I stole money. At least one person lost their job because I refused to take responsibility for my actions. For better or worse, I was never caught.
There were many things awry inside that I needed to look at, particularly around integrity, honesty, respect, and trust. Unfortunately, all I had the capacity to understand at the time was that I didn’t value money the same way others did. I didn’t really value it at all. The risks I was taking began to feel more and more ridiculous to me. I soon felt myself growing beyond theft, toward a new relationship with money. For years, I tried out with various, more passive roles: runaway, victim, denouncer. None of them fit for long.
Your grandma Blue was the one who nudged me toward awareness. At least, she was the first I really heard. She sat with me in the backyard of our basement apartment in Sellwood, just before the wedding, and communicated something to the effect of ‘if you’re going to marry my daughter, get your financial life together!’
Nearly ten years after that conversation, I’m just starting to feel like I’ve got enough understanding and resources to build a foundation for our family.
Sorry it took so long, son.
+++
Someone once told me that “you are entitled to your labor; you are not entitled to the fruits of your labor.”
You can give everything you’ve got and for some it will not be enough. For many it may be too much. If or when you choose to give more of yourself than is necessary, do so with a level heart: never expect acknowledgement or reward for the ways you show up that are about you being you. If they do come your way, receive them with grace and humility.
There is no destination, Z. You have this moment, then this one. That’s it.
Humans, with all of our ingenuity, have built massive multiplayer games where some win and others lose. Money is one of those games. You’re one of the lucky ones, the privileged ones. You don’t have to play, but if you choose to, and learn the rules, anything is possible. And, you get to be you.
That’s what I got for now. Took two months to write this one. Got a poem for you next time.
All my love,
your papa Sean