Stuck.

Stuck.

A few weeks ago the wife and I discussed jumping ship. Vamanos! (in the words of Dora.) Together though, and with the kids. It was the ‘sell all our possessions and move to a different continent’ kind of discussion.

Or at least a work transfer for a year. Or at least a month long vacation overseas.

Or maybe just a quick sun soaked trip to Hawaii or Mexico…

Okay, fine. A weekend in a nearby city.

But! We definitely stay in a hotel that has a water slide. And we order room service nachos and we splurge on a pay per view movie.

A lot of us have these conversations, correct? And they follow the same line, don’t they? At first big and grand, then scaled down and closer to reality, more inline with our work and schools’ schedules. More true to (or at least less offensive to) our budgets.

And of course we all know someone who just came back from the Caribbean, who just posted those new pictures of ancient Greece and that beautiful green sea. Who just flooded our Facebook with pictures of backpacking through Thailand. We might even know the couple who just upped and moved to another country/culture/continent. We see them eating mangoes and coconuts at every meal.

And Damn. Do I ever like myself some mangoes and coconuts.

So it’s a good thing that the local grocery store sells both mangoes and coconuts, because I’m not going anywhere.

I am stuck.

In no near future will I move to another continent, country, or culture. Neither will I soon be heading overseas for that work exchange. I’m not even going to head off to sunny mexico or Hawaii, despite the fact that spring break has just come and gone, and our Instagram and Facebook feeds are flooded with pictures from far away tropical beaches and all you can eat and drink buffets…

Now, of course I realize in the very literal sense, I’m not truly stuck. A quick trip to said sunny beach is only a credit card away. But I’m talking about a sense of ‘stuck’ that is deeper than a trip. Something a vacation could only distract me from. Something permanent, that is there for me on my return, be it from a hotel with watersides and room service nachos, or from sun and sandy beaches.

There are a lot of factors that can contribute to you feeling stuck, and perhaps surprisingly, not all of those factors are bad. In fact, many of them make up the best parts of our life. Does anything cement us more firmly in place than our children? Their school and friends? Swim lessons and Girl Guides and upcoming soccer seasons. Or what about the mortgage or rent for the house you wake up in and eat and play and sleep in. That kitchen counter where you prepare your family meals, that sunny spot where you curl up and read comes at a price. If you have a spouse or partner, you know the trade off. You get to spend your life, discovering each other, making a shared adventure, but that means you’re tethered. Your solo adventures are limited. You’re actions have weight for more than just you alone.

Recently I’ve felt especially stuck in my job. I’m a Registered Nurse who just graduated a few years ago. A few months ago I took a position on a very busy surgical unit. This isn’t a medical blog so I’ll spare the details, but the takeaway is that I’ve found the learning curve staggeringly steep. Just as I was beginning to feel confident in my previous role, I am now thrust back into the stress and chaos of once again being a novice.

I usually leave my wife out of these posts (she can get her own damn blog!), but it’s worth noting that she also faces an incredibly steep learning curve in her job. Each new day seems to bring challenges that are both exhilarating and draining. And though we might dream of running overseas, the weight of our careers pulls at us in a very real way.

And is it too obvious to state that I am stuck in my body? That all of us are stuck in our individual bodies. Now, I want to be grateful for my body, it is amazing despite my ungratefulness for it at times. Ever changing and adapting to the stress I put it through. It tries it’s best to compensate for my lack of sleep and reliable exercise (notice I said reliable there to give you the impression that there might be some level of exercise, just not reliable…yeah…). It puts up with my chicken wings and beer nights… but, not quite as well as it used to. As I draw closer to 40 I notice the heaviness in my gut the next day, the lines on my forehead that my children like to point out do not go away after I raise my eyebrows at them…

But working in a hospital makes me realize how fortunate I am to just have a body with a few extra pounds, wrinkles and the occasional grey hair. It also reminds me daily of the sobering reality that if we are lucky enough, if we live long enough, each and every one of us will come to feel stuck in our body.

So why talk about being stuck? It’s a bit of a downer, isn’t it?

Because despite our love of autonomy, our stubborn insistence that we have, and always will have full control of our lives, at some point reality says otherwise. It’s my belief that being stuck may not be the worst thing in the world. Being stuck and insisting that you’re not, might be. Because knowing the ways that you are stuck can lead to a freedom all it’s own.

How much of our time and energy do we spend trying to avoid staring down the ways that we’re truly stuck? How much time imagining how life could be different if we lived somewhere else? How much time shopping online, dropping things into our carts that might distract us or entertain us or make our lives better in some immeasurable way? How much time staring at other families spring break trips with envy? How much time imaging life in that more lucrative or less stressful career? How much time do we spend wishing that our children or partners were different in some way? How much time reliving our past, wanting to change some past event. How much time disliking some aspect of our still amazingly functioning body?

There are some things we can change, of course! The existence and expanse of my gut is directly correlated to my intake of chicken wings, beer and lack of reliable exercise! The way we work and play and eat and drink and sleep have a real effect on how we feel. It might actually be time for a trip – not to escape our life, but maybe to wake to it. Maybe we need to go to Hawaii and see an active volcano. Maybe we need to see the island grow beneath our feet. Maybe we need to make changes in our job. Maybe your job is mundane and soul sucking. Maybe the same could be said about your partner… but maybe (and most likely), life is just hard at times, and you might need to lean into the places where you feel stuck. Maybe that job is hard because it’s actually interesting and the stakes are actually high. Maybe that partner is a whole world of adventure that you haven’t seen for a while because you’ve become blind to the familiar (and as we’ve talked about before, alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity…).

I’m getting danger-close to man in the mirror content here, so I’ll back off. But it’s worth mentioning that these things are cliched because they’re true. Consider the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

The serenity prayer is cliched and oft repeated because it’s true. You don’t have to be a theist to get it. No belief in a deity is necessary to understand its truth. There is much that we can change if we are courageous. And there is much that we cannot affect. Places where we are well and truly stuck. We could spend our entire lives trying to work out the difference.

And if we’re wise, we probably will.