Field Note: Growing Where I’m stuck

I understand that disengagement does not make me invisible or change anything.

There are systems I do not support but still have to move through. Cultural rituals I don’t enjoy. Beliefs I don’t share. Institutions I wouldn’t choose.

Some participation is simply practical—part of raising children, working, paying bills, and living where I live.

I can pay $30 to sit through part of a football game because my child is in the marching band.

Annoying? Yes.

Worth supporting her? It has to be. That is the price the school system put on a band parent.

I see that, just as I see the damaged instruments and all the extra effort and money required to keep music programs alive.

This is not my school system. It is not aligned with me. I regret moving here and would not choose this place again, no matter what the glory-glory newsletters say.

We are simply trying to live inside another system built by bureaucrats, politicians, policies, traditions, and community performances.

Woopee.

My child is finding her own pockets of peace and happiness inside systems neither of us particularly chose.

So am I.

For years, I thought that if I participated enough, worked hard enough, stayed open enough, I would eventually find community and belonging.

Ha.

I have let that expectation go.

This is where I live for now.

There are performances of belonging I am no longer willing to give. I will not manufacture enthusiasm or pretend allegiance.

I’ll simply stay out of what is not mine.

Some people may interpret that as choosing the wrong side. I have been cast as the villain in other people’s stories before.

Accepted.

What I have actually chosen is myself, my children, and our little homestead.

Life does not permit complete disengagement. I still work, shop, drive, attend school events, pay bills, answer emails, and participate in the ordinary mechanics of society.

But participation is not belonging.

Awareness is not obligation.

Radical acceptance does not require me to call it all beautiful or call out anything as terrible.

It means I stop arguing with the fact that this is where I am.

It means I stop arguing with the fact that I can do or can’t do anything about it.

And from here, I make simple somethings.

Dinner.

A home.

Strong legs.

Words.

Children who know themselves.

A prettier room.

A sky noticed.

A life that is increasingly mine.

I tried engaging.

It attracted the wrong kind of attention.

So I withdraw.

I still hope to move on eventually. Given the choice again, I would make far more radical choices.

But survival rarely gives us a panoramic view. We make decisions under pressure, with limited information, narrow options, responsibilities, fear, hope, and whatever freedom we have at the time.

I did well in some ways.

I would like to do better.

And eventually, I would like to be somewhere else.

For now, I am in the mud.

Like a lotus.

Ironic.

Fine.

It’s nice mud.

Lotuses grow in mud and muck.

So for now:

Nature is my community.

My children, animals, and plants are my homestead.

Bike rides, a glass of wine, and making things help me come back to myself.

Meditation is my religion.

Namaste.

I must stay.

For now.