Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Moore: "A life work is a multicolored, tattered quilt"

Jason McCarty, "... psychotherapist interested in philosophy, psychology, religion, culture, art and music...", shares his career confusions yesterday and today in "Jack No Master" and "Building a Work Life | the dark(stuck)ness is a beginning". The first post refers to Thomas Moore's book, A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You were Born to Do and the second to David Whyte's book,  The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self & Relationship. McCarty shares a quote from A Life at Work that resonates with his current concerns. Moore writes:

“A life work is a multicolored, tattered quilt. It is not a simple, monochromatic, one-size-fits-all template that you simply adjust to. It may have gaps and holes and incomplete sections. It may not even feel like a life work, especially when you are in the middle of it. There may come a time when you can look back and see the sense in all the parts and glimpse a true life work, but even then it may be full of holes made by a long history of struggles.”

McCarty's response? "Wow. That is me. But I don’t want to wait for the glimpse, I want to see now."

In the other post, McCarty includes two poems by Rainer Maria Rilke that Whyte shares in The Three Marriages. McCarty states, "I have been writing about this feeling I’ve had recently where I feel farther away from any clarity then ever before. What it looks like to move forward has never been so unclear, and yet I feel like I am in something. I feel far away. But Whyte is helping me to see that this feeling of far away is telling me something. I think it is possibly telling me both of the possibilities he offers: that I have forgotten where I am going (maybe never knew) and that I am at the beginning."

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