On a recent trip back to Canada, I was on my way home from
wherever I’d been wandering, and I decided to stroll through the Public Gardens
off Spring Garden Road. I exited through the old wrought-iron gate that drops you
out onto Sackville Street, across from the CBC Radio-Canada building. I thought a lot about opportunities I had
lost in recent years, including the maybe-sorta if-you-lived-here offer from CBC two years ago, following my
interview on Weekend Mornings. At the time, I was still married and living in
Miami, and I thought if things had been different, that it would have been a tremendous
opportunity to work for Canada’s most respected broadcaster. We all risk losing wonderful opportunities
when we hold on too long to what we may already know is not right for us.
Walking out of the park that day, I felt a
pang in my heart, and asked myself why it had taken me too long to see, and so
long to get out of that relationship, and what I’d lost by being so haphazard
in my decision-making throughout life.
Many circumstances during my most recent trip amounted to a
final decision for me; that I would sail my boat home in the Spring. I’m perhaps famous for deciding on a road to
follow, reasons for which I probably possess at least momentarily, but then quickly
forget, then end up following through with, more-less blindfolded. That hasn’t always worked out so well for me,
but I’m no longer sure that I know any other way to live. What other instructions
are there to follow, but intuition, right or wrong, telling you this is where
you belong, if only for a while?
As I prepare to sail home, it doesn’t feel like anything is
about to change. Every day feels like the other, aside from a slightly increasing
stress of bringing everything together by my self-imposed deadline. It’s all very reminiscent of my departure for
Cuba seven years ago. Some days it can
feel like you’re going nowhere, and the tedium of mediocre repetitive days
leave you with the impression that you’ve accomplished nothing. But, when I sum
up the last 7 years, I’m able to reassure myself that I have packed in some
life experience; some of it good, some of it horrific, and others are moments
of absolute bliss that I wouldn't trade for any amount of comfort and certainty of an ordinary life.
But, I know myself, I have all but stalled-out here in Miami.
As a good friend recently helped me see, not everyone
deserves the benefit of the doubt. I’ve
spent a lot of my heart on people in whom I thought I could see more, only to
learn it was never there; it was just a projection of my own hope, for both
them, and for myself. Right now, I feel
like it has been a lot of wasted time. But someday, I am sure, I will see a
greater value in my treading water in Miami for as long as I have. There’s a
reason, and whatever that reason is, it has led me to a new beginning.
The Miami River will soon be in the rear-view mirror, and
along with it, past hopes of what I once thought would have, could have, been a
good life.
A good life still awaits… anywhere but here.