Life Weaves

by | Jun 21, 2019

06/13/2019

It started with a desire to walk by the ocean. I then discovered the only ocean-walkers were golfers enjoying an 18-hole round of golf. Satisfying my desire for a trip to the ocean, I invited a friend on a lunch walk to the beach. The walk was lovely, don’t mistake my words, but it wasn’t the stunning cliff ocean scene only Golfers were privileged to experience. The sight tempted my desire to pick up a golf club and swing it. My beach-walking friend shares his tee time for the next day and before my next breath, my presumption came over me and I invited myself on their tee time as a walking observer. He was too kind to decline my self-invite and I am too naïve about golf to know if inviting myself was a major taboo.

But can I tell you how wondrous the experience was? Just walking, witnessing, wowing, wondering. I wept a couple of times gazing at the beauty and feeling the awe of it all. The morning excursion filled me with joy and wonder, for sure a desired state of mind, and particularly as I continue to mourn the passing of my father.

Weaving life – losses and joys – as the natural way of life is my new area of study. After my father’s death, I went into overdrive to complete practical tasks. In my mind, tasks complete first, then space to grieve would be available. But grieving doesn’t work this way and there is no doubt in my mind that you, the reader, know this. I knew it before this experience and still, somehow, the pattern snuck up on me.

Watching these gentlemen, a particular breed of men who are kind, intelligent, impeccable with their word, generous with their heart, and share my profession of financial planning, I came to see golfing as the weave of life. The vast open space of the golf course and a feminine quality of openness and care, then the focused determined practice of hitting the ball down a fairway to a smaller green and finally skillfully precisely into the hole, with a masculine agentic quality of determination and forward action. We require both to weave life well.

When we focus our attention only on action and getting the ball in the hold, we burn out and miss the vast view. When we neglect the need to swing our club, put objects in the air and complete the hole, we wander aimlessly perhaps, without ground, without progress. Financial planning, like life, requires both.  Good planning tees up (pun intended) the opportunity for choice, and when to preference one area of attention over another.

Right now, my need for more grieving space means that any strokes to the green or putts to the hole are limited, colored perhaps by sorrow energy that does not belong in today’s decisions or decisions for the future.

When a state of mind like grief is present, we pause. I encourage you to pause. Pausing is the kind and generous action; it is the invitation to weave our personal and financial life. Grief accompanies any form of loss, which of course can be the loss of life. But loss can also be in other forms – lost dreams, lost youth, lost discoveries. Our children graduate from high school and college. Job opportunities evolve and some even vanish. Friends scatter and require effort to reconnect, even with social media. Health shifts as we age, especially if we ignore nutritious consumption and favorable exercise.

As summer season enters, do not hesitate to pause, particularly if a sense of loss stands by your side. In these times, weaving slowly and intentionally provides room for exceptional care and better decisions – both vital for financial planning and life.

Weaving,