Don’t Settle
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“People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We have no choice but to stray from childhood. We grow up. We gain years. We look around, glimpsing the world that might just be ours, the life that we might just live, the self we might just become. Maturity settles like fog, gray and humbling. We find ourselves wanting things: Safety. Security.
We want to be settled.
And then some of us get there. Here. To stable ground. And in the stillness of our standing, we see flashes of what we have left behind: Rumbling chaos of heart and mind. Exquisite uncertainty. Jagged pieces of self, scattered, scintillating. We tell ourselves that we are thankful. Thankful that we are now here. Settled.
But in truth, some of us know. Some of us are brave enough to know. That progress is rooted in rubble. That hope lingers in movement. That there is an incomparable fertility in being unsettled. And so. Those of us who are honest, who are aware, or just think too much, realize something, something we are hesitant to admit: We miss being uncertain, unsure, unsettled.
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How can we stay settled, snug in our tidy adult lives, while also retaining the glorious chaos of childhood and becoming, of who we once were? Can we really have both or must we choose? Is there a way to preserve an unsettled and searching core within an outwardly settled existence?
Opportunity. That is one of the biggest benefits of being unsettled. When loose ends are left untied and when our course isn’t neatly charted, there may be fear and uncertainty. But there is also the opportunity for unrealized vision. It is easy with youth because so much of our lives are yet undetermined. But as we age and make decisions that, one by one, have repercussions throughout our existence, less is left up to chance and that opportunity gets whittled away over time.
I think about this a lot because being unsettled is not without risks and drawbacks too. Especially if we fear losing what we’ve gained so far, the settled vs. unsettled debate gets uncomfortable. It’s easy to choose the life we know. But it can be exciting to choose the life we don’t.
I write novels. It doesn’t get much more unsettling than that.
Wow. Light bulb. You leave two little sentences here and I am in a world of thought. Thank you. I have never thought of this before, but maybe I write novels because of its core uncertainty, of the very unsettling experience of constant creation and becoming? Much of my life is very settled – I am married, I have two (almost three) kids, we own our home, we are in a city where we will likely stay, but maybe I so adore fiction and need it because it infuses my life with a good deal of mystery and gray. Every day that I chip away at my story is one that I don’t really know what to expect. I never know what will happen with my characters – where they will go, what they will do, what questions they will ask in their words and wanderings…
For me, this is a very interesting question. I have known for a while now that my passion is writing. I could not go very long without doing it, but I have never truly known why. In your comment, I think I have found a not-so-tiny clue.
Thank you!
Agree! Agree!
As always–a post that makes me go hmmm–In January of this year, I moved in with my nearest and dearest and after years of wondering–will I meet someone I now do. On one hand, I am trying to embrace that feeling of the warm cozy sweater that comes with commitment and settled. Yet, I also find myself kicking and screaming and worrying that if I ‘settled’ too much I will lose myself, lose opportunity as Gale said, lose growth.
At first, that push back on my relationship was damaging and I realized that a healthy relationship requires nestling into settled at some point. So I have started pushing myself more in my business, breaking out of my settledness in that arena; having new dreams, new goals, forging new ground.
I hadn’t put all that together–until reading your post. Thanks Aidan!!
I think you guys are onto something. I had an editor ask me recently why I write about dark things like divorce, infidelity, eating disorders, etc. She said, “You seem like you have such a happy life.” And I do for the most part. Maybe that’s the answer I should’ve given her: “I write about dark things because they unsettle me in the best possible way. At my core I desire to be unsettled and uncertain, because adventure and daring lurk in those dark places. Daring adventures I can only sort of take, that is, via the lives my characters live.:) A safe, vicarious way to be unsettled.
While I’ve been in school I’ve had this nice feeling of, “I’m only here for a while and then, who knows what I’ll do”–I’ve gotten stability without settling down. On the brink of graduating, I feel anxious about the next step, finding myself placing all the weight in the world on what job I get. This post was such a great reminder, though, of what is essential in the next step (income for my family, satisfaction for me) and what is endlessly malleable (what form getting the essentials takes). I like gale’s point about opportunity and today, as I apply for jobs and consider career paths, I am going to try not to conflate opportunity costs with opportunities lost, to see choices as pieces instead of posts.
I love safety & security and shun change. All of my adult life I have endeavored to be settled for those reasons. But it’s an elusive goal. Life is ever evolving and ever changing. It’s a journey that will only be settled when it’s finished.
On to something, indeed. I absolutely agree that writing gives us that unsettled feeling–and the excitement and possibilities and not-knowing. I love thinking about in this way. Thank you!
Existential questions-very useful exercise. Unfortunately, not everyone is good at wrestling w these responsibly.
Thanks, Tim. And now you have me intrigued? What happens when people don’t wrestle with these questions responsibly? What does it mean to approach them irresponsibly?
I am so in agreement with Gayle (first comment above) who wrote “But as we age and make decisions that, one by one, have repercussions throughout our existence, less is left up to chance and that opportunity gets whittled away over time”. How true as I ponder that.
But I believe that it’s next to impossible to embrace, embrace wholly that is, that we as adults can ever again reach out to capricious opportunity or chance – there is way too much riding on what we’ve dreamed about and achieved, a little at a time, over years, to let large fragments of what we’ve rightfully gained go to the wayside if we’ve made an incorrect decision.
Perhaps some of us think that those dreams of childhood – dreams of being settled still have not been met as adults. The dream is the same no matter the age or maturity?
By nature I am unsettled and filled with wanderlust. I can look at my life and find points where I was quite content, more than a few of them.
But I also find more than a few where I felt the need to mix things up. I don’t think that aging prevents us from feeling the need to try, to experience new things. Responsibilities sometimes can prevent us from diving head first into new ventures, but even those can’t stop us from following that which we wish to seek.
The hard part is trying to balance it.
Wow. I’m surprised at the reaction to my little sentences. I have always been very conscious of my writing as a way to explore the roads untaken, the goals unreached, the relationships not pursued. And also as a way to soothe the inevitable itches and yearnings that come with the realization that choosing one life necessarily excludes others, and no, I’m not going to be able to run off and work in the Wild West Show at Disneyland Paris now that I have a kid. I’m not going to fall in love for the first time ever again, and even if I did go back to the places and things I adored when I was younger, I would no longer fit. My time in that particular place has passed, and I cannot repeat it.
But my characters can.
Settling gives us a sense of security. But nothing in life is absolutely secure. And it’s that change.. that mystery of what’s to come next.. that makes life exciting. It’s nice to have the challenge of being a bit unsettled at times and seeing how we grow from that.. how we are able to calm our unsettled feelings and find security in spite of that nagging discomfort of stepping out of our comfort zone. When we can conquer our fears, instead of staying in a safe haven of security, we grow and become more settled with ourselves and our choices. But (if we’re lucky) with each new day comes a new challenge… a chance to be a little “unsettled” and to practice our skills of meeting those challenges head on. And one day we find peace in knowing we have security, even when life is unsettling.
I agree with Gale – if you get too settled, you can miss out on opportunities, which is scary. But then again… being unsettled is scary, too! I try to find places in my life where I am VERY settled, then let the other parts meander. That way, I have something solid and stable to come home to when the rest of my life feels uncertain…
I think this is key, namely to fashion parts of our lives that are the portrait of settled and then to create aspects of our lives that are by definition more tumultuous and unsettled. It does amaze me that I didn’t realize until posting this, and getting some comments, that writing is this for me – my existential – and precious – pocket of chosen tumult.
“That progress is rooted in rubble.” Ahhh. Because my life so often feels like a shambles. I have the house, the husband, the kids and the dog, but me? I am a big pile of rubble rumbling. I don’t know how I stack up. I’m constantly searching for the way my puzzle fits together.
My brother loves to say I will always be beyond happy because I’ll never stop trying to solve that puzzle. I always thought it was because I was too stupid to know better.
His words plus yours and my latest vow to be more generous, perhaps this is the state of being where greatest bliss arises.
Hmmmm….now you got me thinking!
Right now my life is pretty settled. And I like it that way. For now. I had so much uncertainty in my life before, that right now it is nice to stop and catch my breath.
I think you can have both. Just not at the same time.
You said a mouthful.
Thing is, is you leave that place of “settled” you instantly find yourself wanting it again.
At this point I am more settled than I have ever been but I still take risks and make bold choices because life is always changing and I evolve with it.
I think if you are living life, you can’t be completely settled. I’ve learned that the unsettled feeling fuels progress. It is those moments when you seek to find answers, to yearn for knowledge and to discover things about yourself and the world that you may not have known existed.
I feel settled because I have a home base, a foundation. From there, it’s all a mystery. Even though I’ve been in California for almost 20 years, I’m an East Coast girl at heart and always think that maybe, someday we’ll get back there. There is this permanent sense of unsettled in my life. When is home going to feel like I’m settled?
I love this post — I am addicted to being unsettled and it is for precisely the reasons you highlight.