My neighbor made me a cup of tea as we sat chatting in her home. It’s been very cold outside and she has a limited income, so while I put on the central heat back home, she simply added a log in the wood-burning stove in her workroom where we met, explained that the rest of the house is cold so she won’t show me around, and planned to go under the covers after I left in order to keep warm.

Like many people here, she’s not poor but earns a livelihood by picking up various jobs or offering her own blend of body/mind work. If some of my neighbors would put their entrepreneurial instincts into making money, they’d be wealthy, but that’s not what they choose to do. They want to live on their own terms, prioritize opportunities to enhance their skills and talents, and carve out their own niche, be it in the arts, writing or music, or in service.

“So I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know. I wrote [in my journal]: ‘It will mean walking in a fog for a bit, but it’s the only way which is not a presumption, forcing the self into a theory.’”

Marion Milner, an early-20^th century British psychoanalyst who observed her life with deep attention and journaled about her experiences and insights, wrote the above.

I thought of my life and the indecisions around what to do and how to live. When I was growing up, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that was to write. I didn’t do it. I gave it a lot of effort in my 20s before getting married (finished my first play at 20) and during my first marriage when I supported my husband through business school, earning a livelihood while writing in early mornings, evenings, and weekends like many writers.

In my 30s I got involved in Zen, and specifically Bernie’s Zen of serving people without jobs, homes, medical services, or support for their families. I moved to Riverdale, then Yonkers, and my writing took the shape of newsletters, grant applications, fundraising, and marketing tools. One way or another, this has continued to this very day.

How did I get here, I often wondered.

In Milner’s words, I had a theory about what I would be and do, but theory is just theory, so I ended up walking in a fog, with certain shapes and forms appearing occasionally in the mist, and I would scan them, feel them, even try them, and at times I’d pause there and other times go on my way.

Milner was right, it’s not easy walking in a fog, discovering and cultivating a purpose with which you didn’t start out originally. Well-meaning relatives always ask: Yes, but how do you make money? You call that a job? You call that a life? Later on, when it looked like I’d settled into a second marriage and work they didn’t understand, they had something else to worry about: What’ll happen when you grow old? Will you be ever able to retire?

I always made enough money to live. In my early years I was proud of having $500 in a savings account, reasoning that that was enough for any emergency that arose. I had no medical insurance for a long while, but I did manage to travel in Europe. I didn’t have the theory, I had the practice.

For years I envied people who knew what they wanted to do from the get-go and went after it. That’s not the case for me. So no, I didn’t have 10,000 hours of writing behind me, which is the latest quota people advocate for mastering a particular skill or art. Instead, I’ve had 10,000 hours walking in fog, and increasing every day. Does that count for anything?

It takes a certain kind of courage to confront questions about your life with the words: “I don’t know.” How will you make money? I don’t know. How will you have medical coverage? I don’t know. And now, how will you get old? I don’t know.

But that I don’t know got me to places I never imagined I’d be in. It didn’t entitle me to sit back and do nothing or to find refuge in inertness, but to keep on walking towards a horizon that’s beyond purpose. A horizon that’s right under my feet at all times.

Nun and writer Joan Chittister wrote: “The task is not to endure the steady march to the end.  It’s to come alive in new ways and kiss life’s hand.”

I’ve been alone these past days. Lori is out east for a few days, so it’s just Aussie and me for the first time in many months. Aussie looks around and then at me, as if asking: “Didn’t there used to be more of us?”

“Yes, Aussie, there were more of us.”

“So, what happened?”

“Fog arrived, Auss.”

“When does it leave?”

“Maybe never, Aussie.”

“I just came back from my trek in the mountains with Leeann and I want to nap under the sun.”

“The sun will reappear this weekend after tomorrow’s rainstorm, Aussie, as will clouds and stars and stormy winds. They’ll show up, fade, show up, smile, and disappear. Fog stays.”