Life Designs
I wrestle with ambiguity. Most clients try to avoid it by engaging in strategic planning or jumping to premature conclusions. While it can sometimes be mitigated, it can't be eliminated, nor should it be in many situations. Learning to not just endure but embrace it requires navigating the physical and mental discomfort it can evoke. As I'm discovering, there are intensities of ambiguity depending on what's at stake. For the last few weeks, I've been a parental caretaker in Wisconsin where the morning fog obscures the rolling hills and rural expansiveness. Shadows of things appear first as it lifts, emphasizing a presence that is more profound than when the details of the building or cluster of trees are clearly visible. Haunting isn't always scary. This role, on top of my other jobs, is logistically easier, but emotionally more difficult. "The work" seems to happen more behind-the-scenes in my psyche than in conscious thought. My end-of-the-day fatigue suggests that more is going on than just a daily routine. Ultimately, what I'm witnessing is a dialogue with mortality, steeped in ambiguity, not over the eventual outcome, but the shape, direction, and timing of the journey between here and there. Is it far, near, what twists lay ahead? "Extending the runway," is my cousin's frequent refrain and encapsulation of the myriad of daily decisions, large and small, one must make. Caretaking is perhaps the ultimate act of Design, full of contradicting complexity and simplicity, enhancing and sustaining life, as all good Design should do, despite knowing the outcome is impermanence. While age and infirmity can bring the conversation with existence more to the surface, it is one that is always ongoing, I realize, looking out at the vague shapes in the distance, equally familiar and foreign, and striving to not want them to be more of one than the other.
*Note: a "0/0 landing" refers to an aircraft landing in weather conditions with zero visibility and zero cloud ceiling.
