So much agency, so little control
In the spring of 2024, my love and I went on a trip to Spain to hike El Camino. We did the Primitivo route which starts in Oviedo and makes its way across the mountainous region of Asturias all the way to Santiago. This trip was 10 days of walking alongside bubbling creeks with only the sound of birds, footsteps, and cows. The trail meanders between small Pueblos and back to farmland and then wilderness again. The trip came when I was at an inflection point in my career. I had been working at the intersection between finance, environmental economics, and climate change policy work. I was in the middle of an interview process for a role in the community development sphere where I would of been working in a more social policy capacity. The new role would provide the opportunity to move to a smaller, more mountainous town closer to family and with a lower cost of living (we were living in DC at the time).
If you know anything about El camino, you know that it is inherently religious in nature. The entire route is peppered with chapels and ends at a cathedral. I spent much of the walk contemplating my life and praying for some clarity or answers or signs from above.
By the end of the trip, I had a sense that I was ready for a change and was going to take the community development job. I felt like God had given me this clarity and would therefore make it happen. I would surely receive the perfect job offer because it was God’s will for me and therefore God would provide! Of course! I returned to DC with clarity and great excitement. A week later, I got the call with the job offer. The offer was not at all what I had expected. The role implied a huge pay cut and a brutal travel schedule. Negotiations proved unfruitful and I was only given one day to make my decision. After furious journal entries, 100s of troubled walks around the neighborhood, and frustrated tears, I felt I had to turn down the job. It was my decision to make. And to live with.
This experience was acutely stressful and, once done, I slipped into a sadness that was deep into my gut. The sadness sat at the base of my belly and it scared me. I would lie awake at night and then go through the motions of my daily tasks. I felt hopeless and overwhelmed. It took time for me to discern why the grief was so palpable- what exactly was I mourning? Was my current job and life really so bad?
Like all things, the answer to this question is multifaceted; however, part of where my sadness stemmed from was mourning the loss of what I wanted God to be. And, therefore, what I wanted a life with God to be.
In the past, I have found that whenever I am at a decision point in my life, I am deeply uncomfortable with the reality of my own agency. I want so badly for decisions to be made for me. For doors to “close or open” in some way where I can make the best of my current circumstances but never own them as something I have chosen. Manifested. Because what if my current circumstances are not what I hope? How do I live with the reality that I will never know what could have been had I made different decisions?
I’ve always wanted a God that had a literal plan for my life. A will. A way. And who held my hand and showed me what to do. I’m beginning to wonder if this a profoundly narrow way to understand the divine. If God made us to be visionaries and dreamers- if God gave us drive and ambition- Wouldn’t she also want us to have the agency within us to build a life from this creative flow? Wouldn’t the divine be present and working no matter what series of decisions we end up making?
The truth is I am terrified of my own agency. But really what’s so scary is the paradox of how my agency coexists with so little control. I can choose to say no to the job but I cannot control if the alternative is better. Or if another job will come along. If I will stay healthy. If I can have a child. If our country will go to war or if the housing market will crash or really anything at all. My agency and dependance on fate are both overwhelmingly real. And I have no idea how to hold both in tension. Luckily, I had constructed a God in my mind that meant I didn’t have to. And now that God has died to me. And I have to mourn the loss- and figure out how to navigate living without him.
The thing about letting our constructs of God die is that what is left feels empty for a while. In my disillusion I no longer know how to pray. Do I pray for answers? Or just for presence? For the serenity to accept everything I cannot control? Or, even harder, to accept what I can control and may have royally screwed up? Do I just need courage to forgive myself? Or to even be kind to myself?
Perhaps the empty space that is left if something we need to get comfortable with. It’s tempting to try and cram it full with a new intellectual construct that I can wrap my arms around. Perhaps, if we can sit in the emptiness and let the fear and grief stay, we can start to develop tools of true resiliency. We can grow comfortable with a non dual mind. With mystery as the end instead of the middle. Maybe this is growing up.