One Brutal Coloring Book

Being retired is rough on my system. I am in withdrawal. No, I am neither climbing walls, nor shooing scorpions off my body. I am not puking my guts out, or sweating off a pound an hour. I am eating and drinking normally. Sleeping pretty well. Exercising. Managing to be reasonably pleasant, kinda sorta. Getting through and getting by.

However, I am in withdrawal. Deep inside. My innards are quaking. My soul is in labor, and ready to make a rare appearance. I am being transformed. I am shedding the cocoon, and readying my wings. I find it scary. A bit traumatic. I can’t believe how deeply enmeshed I was in a rather soulless existence.

I can feel my soul shedding many layers of crap and stuff and calluses. I can feel my spiritual muscles aching as they shake off the rust. I can feel my heart pumping fast, ready to explode. Not with disease. With serenity. I am on the verge of becoming a much saner and simpler human being.

Withdrawal demands that I let go of my busyness. I need to surrender my need to create staggering lists to accomplish each day. I am shedding this compulsion to keep my life in such a state of blur, I can never really focus on the needs of my soul. I finally understand what it truly means to rejoice in a day and be glad in it. It means to receive it, not conquer it. It means to enjoy it, not devour it like a meal at the end of a fast.

Withdrawing calls me to cease any effort to save the world, the planet or the people on it, or even my family and friends, for that matter. I can hear God’s incessant whisper in my ear, telling me to let Me take care of things. Have some faith. Do less, but with greater love and humility. I can feel myself peeling away this layer of needing to be needed, as if I were removing a sticky adhesive bandage from an open wound. Withdrawal hurts.

Retirement creates a tsunami of darkness, much like a total eclipse of the sun. There is that moment when one realizes that everything has changed, has been utterly transformed. It is as if you have been uprooted, and now float about the sky without the anchor line of work. No real definition. No genuine societal meaning. Nothing more than a spiritual shadow of your former Self.

There is a precise point in time, which I can neither remember nor pin, when I knew that the coloring book lines of my portrait had disappeared. I knew I must continue to paint my life, but was now confronted by a large blank white canvas. This is scary as Hell. I can do anything I want. I have little idea of what I want. Nobody else cares what I want.

Now, this is what is meant by taking a risk. This is what the three wise men faced when looking at an enormous white star in the black sky. I too must move. Make a movement. Head out and beyond the fear. The first step is a stagger. Moving out into the wilderness of the blank unknown. Trusting the light and following it.

I am moving now. I am ambling down the lane of my life. I feel like I am learning how to stroll. No longer darting to and fro in search of success and significance. Just walking. Just looking for a sliver of sublime.

I remain in withdrawal. I suspect I will until I close my eyes for the last time. I think it is the nature of living in the modern world. The suction of being defined by what you do is so strong, one continues to cling for the affirmation and approval of the world. I am forever drawn by me my insatiable need to be known. My deep inner yearning to be recognized. To be named.

There is a morsel of me that will always seek those coloring book lines of work, in order to say to an indifferent world, “Here I am!”