Getting Here
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not an inspirational quote kind of person. I say that without judgment; in fact, I envy people who are. I’m generally too cynical, too verbose, and too prone to overanalyzing - not three of my best traits. But I suppose there’s a good reason Rumi has maintained relevance across cultures for 800 years. As I sat sobbing in therapy a few months ago, this was the quote my therapist, Lauren, recited to me, though she took some creative license to rewrite it as “Seek that which fans your flames.” The “who” in my life wasn’t my problem, it was the “what.”
Lee, my partner of over 10 years, and I have always been too focused on work. We’re not proud of it. Lee’s M.O. was to work hard when he was young and had a lot of energy, build up both financial and reputation capital, and then enjoy the fruits of his labor later in his 30s while he was still young and healthy. While I have a great career, it’s been far less lucrative than Lee’s, so I don’t really know what my M.O. was besides to burn myself out. Lee’s plan was on track until 2020 when he developed SCDS and otosclerosis - two separate ear conditions that cause debilitating dizziness, hypersensitivity to noise, and early-stage hearing loss. He does a much better job articulating his symptoms than I ever could, so you can read what he wrote about his experience here.
There is a surgery that may help, but it is not frequently performed and the outcomes are mixed. Faced with the possibility of losing much of his mobility, Lee decided to take a year off from work to check things off the ol’ bucket list. I was originally not going to join him on this sabbatical; I had been at my job for less than a year and didn’t think I had the financial cushion to feel safe taking that much time off (when I later made a budget, this proved false). Over Christmas 2021, my dear friend Sarah was staying with us, and she spent the better part of her visit trying to convince me to go with him. I was firm in my refusal: “I can’t leave my job. I can’t afford it. I’m about to start grad school. Besides, I don’t need this like Lee does.” I could tell she was not convinced by my valid yet empty excuses, but she eventually dropped it.
While all of those reasons were legitimate, the real reason that I didn’t want to go was that I was afraid of losing the stability that I felt like I had just finally reached in the past ~3 years. Growing up poor taught me zero money management skills, but it did teach me to prioritize financial stability as the source of happiness; whoever said “money doesn’t buy happiness” clearly had never laid awake at night wondering how they would pay their bills. My early career did not pay well, so it was really only in 2018 that I began to make progress on my savings and other financial goals. If I went with Lee, I would not only be giving up that stability and control, but I would maybe even need to be financially dependent on him. I know these things are trivial to some people, but they terrified me.
As Lee’s May 2022 departure drew nearer, though, my feelings shifted. I started missing him. I started feeling regret and guilt about what would happen if he returned, his surgery didn’t go well, and he was left functionally disabled. How could he or I forgive me if, instead of seizing the last opportunity we had to do things we love together, I prioritized my comfort over quality time? I started feeling despair over a future of endless 9-5 grind with no respite. I started feeling FOMO as I watched my friends buy homes, start families, move across the country, make radical career changes - I wasn’t envious of what they were doing, necessarily, more just that they were moving forward with life, while I felt like I was going through the motions. As I confessed all of this during therapy to Lauren, the first time I had said it out loud, she asked me what emotions were coming up for me as I talked about it. It was then, also for the first time, that I burst into tears, and choked out, “I guess I’m sad.” She then did what she did best, which was help me break down what was stopping me, what the risks were, and what the benefits were. As I rattled off my reasons for not being able to go, Lauren interrogated those reasons, quickly uncovering that they were, as Sarah too saw a couple months prior, empty.
This went on for the duration of our session. At the end, she said to me, “this situation makes me think of a quote by Rumi, ‘Set your life on fire. Seek [that which fans] your flames.’ You will make the decision here that is right for you, and I do not want you to feel like I’m pushing you one way or another, but you sound like someone who needs to set their life on fire. If it’s not going with Lee, I think you need something else.” Of course, I only wanted to go with Lee, there wasn’t anything else. And despite my boorishness, this quote hit me like a ton of bricks. I left therapy silent and emotional, and sat on the conversation for weeks.
When I drummed up the courage to tell Lee I wanted to join him, he enveloped me in a huge hug and said, “I’ve been hoping you’d come to this conclusion, but didn’t want to push you.” I spent a month stressing about telling work, and when I finally did, my manager, team, and colleagues were wonderfully supportive and happy for me. I still feel moments of anxiety when I think about not working for a year; this visceral fear of financial insecurity and/or joblessness is something that I know will come up for me a lot in the next 12 months. But when I think about 5, 10, 20+ years in the future, I don’t think there’s any world in which I regret this choice.
So now, on to the fun stuff.
