On the Unlived Life

One month ago, I turned 39. I felt empty with longing.

Sometimes I want another life, to be anywhere but here. To live in another time, to inhabit a different body, to have a different job and relationship. To exist in the past, the future, or even right here in the present, but the version of this life where I took that other turn toward the well-trodden path. Perhaps on that path, I would have come into a stable job, three kids, and a yard full of maturing fruit trees.

One month ago, I turned 39. I felt full of gratitude. 

There was a quiet stillness in this sense of being enough, even with the aches of wanting to be more. Right next to that desire for a different life lay the deep realization that I am right where I need to be.

I felt this truth arrive fully on the final in-person retreat of our Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy Training.

Photo by Leslie Pace

We were seated in a circle on the forest floor beneath the towering oaks and the majestic redwoods. The sun gently warmed my eyelids as I looked around this gathering of incredible humans. And miraculously all around us, cicadas emerged from their long sleep, shimmering in their iridescent green, unfurling wings far greater than the shell they left behind.

In that moment, I was able to see each person in the circle as a cicada, emerging from a shell of their own, unfurling magnificently colored wings glittering in the sunshine all around me. Each person bearing their own flutter of blue, green, yellow, and orange.

And right then, I remembered: I, too, have wings. 

As I was seated there, I couldn’t help but feel like the messy path that led me to this moment was the right one. That I was right in trusting things would unfold in their own time and just as they needed to. The leaves softly whispered a deep, profound yes.

Yet even surrounded by that vibrant light, the longing for the other path remained: the joyful little one to hold, the sweet delicate figs fruiting from our trees. I may always inhabit the tension between gratitude for what is and longing for what isn’t. Over the years of my Dharma practice, I’m still learning to make a home and settle into this tension. Into my messy, conflicted right here, right now full of inevitable suffering. The longing for my life to be something other than what it is only intensifies this experience of suffering.

Acceptance is the breeze that clears the dense smoke. It is a gentle surrender, a softening of desire that lets the grip unclench. A refusal to keep feeding the fire of an unlived life. In the simple act of witnessing the tension without fighting it, relief arrives.

Photo by Leslie Pace

I have come to see that this is exactly what I have to offer as a Buddhist eco-chaplain. My messy, raw, real vulnerability allows me to meet people wherever they are in their messy, raw, real lives too. More important than choosing any particular path, this practice is about looking honestly into the chosen path, with all its bumps and bruises and imperfections, and continuing to try and find the wise way forward.

So often we hide our vulnerabilities out of fear that someone might think we failed at this one beautiful life, but there is an immense, irreplaceable value in giving the world our authentic selves. We liberate our own hearts by allowing ourselves to share our truth and be exactly as we are. A liberated heart is more available to be a compassionate, supportive presence for others as they step into their own authentic truth too.

Photo by Leslie Pace

For now, my practice as a Buddhist eco-chaplain must begin with me getting real, honest, and vulnerable with myself so that I can extend that same non-judgment to everyone else sitting in that circle beneath the oaks and redwoods. I know the Earth is here to help me too. When I take a deep breath, let go of my own self-judgment, and release my body into the Earth, I feel deeply held by rich soil, decaying leaves, and wiggling worms, in that dark, familiar underground world.

Whatever path you are on, and whatever unlived life you carry, may you pause today, soften your grip, and offer yourself the grace of total acceptance.