If you are new here or missed last week's edition, you can catch up on the past letters here. If you are reading this for the first time, Iâd love you to sign up below to join the other learn-it-alls:
Aloha fellow learn-it-all đ
Greetings from Honolulu, Hawaii đş
Well folks, I am breaking all the rules. Iâm sending you a letter early this week.
On a snowy evening twenty-seven years ago today around 9:30 pm at Bon Secour hospital in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, my dear mother witnessed the first breath that gave me the life that I continue to live today.
Itâs a miracle to be alive, and I am so grateful to be writing you all today.
Itâs a hobbitâs birthday for me and I am gifting you this piece of writing as a small present. I hope you take the permission I am granting you to let go of figuring out life.
Now, letâs dive into letter 146 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!
âQuestion to think about
Why donât I have my life figured out?
đď¸ Writing
"What is something I pretend to know about, and why?"
The "actually curious" card, deceptively comforting in its whiteness, stared at me expecting an answer.
It had all begun as a funny impulse. There I was sipping âwhite mischiefâ tea out of a gold-rimmed teacup with three of my closest friends that feel like sisters to me celebrating life.Â
Tea Party Time
For my birthday I wanted a high tea like I did when I was ten years old, minus the American Girl Dolls. I convinced them to get gussied up in dresses worn only once in a blue moon that needed to get steamed. After the tea sandwiches and cakes were served, I excitedly whipped out my recently purchased deck of âactually curiousâ cards. This led to diving into an enriching intellectual conversation to connect more deeply and openly question our truths.
The second card that was pulled prompted the question âwhat is something you pretend to know about, and why?â
I was met with the comfort that everyone confessed to feeling a sense of pretending at numerous things in their lives. Even wearing a dress and attempting to delicately sip tea out of a dainty porcelain tulip-painted tea cup made one friend feel like a poser.
For me, it felt like a northern Michigan snow flurry of answers flooded me with this question.
I have many passions in my life of things that I like to explore and the more I dive deeper into them, the more I realize that Iâm not even scratching the surface of what there is to know on that topic. It all feels like a facade where I am stumped.Â
I felt at that moment like I was a phony.Â
I call myself a writer, yet most days I still feel hugely unqualified to call myself one. I say I am an athlete, yet last weekend I barely even walked half of my steps. I say I am a caring daughter, yet I barely even get weekly calls in with my parents. I work at a Hawaiian company, I still am only on level two of learning Hawaiian on Duolingo. I call myself a sailor, yet I still get scared of the thought of sailing in the sea alone. I call myself a surfer, yet I still inevitably faceplant at least a handful of times every time. I call myself a mindfulness practitioner, yet I still sometimes find myself scrolling past the limit timers on Instagram under the covers of my bed.
Deep down, I know I'm far from being alone feeling like this. Such sentiments are so embedded in our cultures that our media reflects them vividly.
Take the social science fiction movie Divergent, for instance, and the main character, Tris. I deeply resonate with her. The film takes place in Chicago where I used to live. She struggles to find belonging and choose which of the five factions to select once she becomes an adult because she is a blend of multiple rather than only one thing. I empathize â being only one facet of a human seems like suffocation â losing the air I breathe. She impulsively decides to take a leap of faith from where she is today with her family in the selfless abnegation faction. Tris chooses the faction called âdauntlessâ because it feels the craziest to become a daring risk-taker who jumps onto the moving L train. Becoming more dauntless helped Tris become better equipped for the uncertainty of life.
There will always be uncertainty in life. Phil Stutz, Jonah Hill's therapist, states that there are three guarantees in life: pain, uncertainty, and hard work. I understand these are all a part of the journey and I cannot run away from them.
I donât want to fake anything or put up some mask that I know what the heck I am doing or naively believe I can fit into one mold.
I feel a semi-identity crisis coming on as I move into this age as a 27-year-old.Â
Confession time from my silly younger self
My younger self is naive. My life is not figured out. Iâve stopped expecting it to be.
There is no elaborate grand plan for my career that will drop out of thin air. My life partner isnât going to come knocking on my door. My definition of success is continually going to shift. My favorite beverage to sip in the morning will continue to vary. My favorite form of cardio will teeter back and forth between numerous activities that make me sweaty. I still am unsure of what I want my legacy to be left and celebrated at my funeral. With all that, I want to live in a place of acceptance, love, and appreciation rather than fear.
I want to be free from the pressure of having to have the answers. Living life with this mindset has enabled me to live in the unknown and start to ask better questions.
I want to pretend like I am assured of where I am going, and I do more than ever, in comparison to any other time in my life. But that still doesnât feel authentically true to share. Even when I express this truth I feel like it can only be mostly true. All the skepticism and questions and exploration are still there. I donât expect this to ever go away. I invite and welcome it to be here along for the ride.
German Poet Rainer Maria Rilke expressed this best:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Sometimes the volume on those questions is blasting. It feels like Iâm at a high school rager with the bass vibrating and my ears ringing. Then there are moments like while steering the boat, where the wind shifts directions so the sail starts bluffing and forces me to head further away from where I originally wanted to. These questions are what caused me to move to Hawaii and redesign my life in the first place. While other times, the volume is mere whispers, as reminders to never be on cruise control.Â
Pretending versus an authentic and intentional life
Living a life with intention calls for a constant recalibration of the course so I donât expect this part of myself to change. Even if it means that I lose some sleep, play my âfeeling softâ sappy sad song playlist more often, or feel lonely sometimes, thatâs what this human experience is all about, right? Feeling all the feelings? Do I really want to rob myself of sharing the truth?
My truth is that I say I am these things, but I simultaneously still feel fully ignorant of these things.
I try my best to set up routines and people in my environment who help me become my best self every day. I feel most happy and content and full this way. I try my best to live with intention in my tiny sliver of life amidst all of the chaos that exists in the world.
Most of us on this blue and green spinning dot get onto a cruise control, but Iâd rather look at what Iâve built in my life and take stock. Yes, I want to plant my flags in the ground, but itâs also scary because that assumes I know the territory around where the flag is. As an explorer, I know that the more I discover, the more I find that I am vastly ignorant. I want to keep staring at my fears right in the eyes and run toward them, not away.
I embrace the unknown and trust in the intentions I set for myself. I reflect on the experiences Iâve lived that equip me with support for rejection, confusion, or failure on the horizon. I never regret exploring what Iâm curious about, sparking connections, exploring passions, or taking risks, so I am going to continue doing that in this 27th year while savoring the beauty of the present in hopes of finding a sense of peace.
My life is âfigured outâ by letting go of âfiguring it outâ.
đŹ Watching
My main takeaway: PUGH
There are three guarantees in life: (1) Pain (2) Uncertainty (3) Hard Work
Donât try to run away from these. Instead, realize that they will be there and find a way to love life despite them.
đ§ Listening
My reflection while listening: We donât need to wear a mask and hide insecurity.
I can choose to find belonging where I am. I donât want to feel like Iâm faking my way through life.
đ Word to define
Nourish: to supply with food and drink, feed; to bring up, nurture, and promote the growth or development of (a child, a young animal, a vice, a feeling, etc.),
Etymology
c. 1300, norishen from Old French norriss-, stem of norrir "raise, bring up, nurture, foster; maintain, provide for" (12c., Modern French nourrir), from Latin nutrire "to feed, nurse, foster, support, preserve," from *nutri (older form of nutrix "nurse"), literally "she who gives suck," from PIE *nu-tri-, suffixed form (with feminine agent suffix) of *(s)nau- "to swim, flow, let flow," hence "to suckle," extended form of root *sna- "to swim." (link)
đ Quotes to inspire
âI would rather die of passion than of boredom.â â Vincent Van Gogh
đ¸ Photo of the Week
I love tea. I love pink. I love Audrey Hepburn. I love my life.
đ Shoutouts
To all of you for being on this platform and for your attention to reading these words that I write.
I appreciate you reading this!
If ideas resonated, Iâd love you to leave a comment, reply to this email, or send me a message on Twitter @JenVermet. I welcome you to my online home if you forgot who I am.
Never stop learning đ
Mahalo đş
Jen
"Most of us on this blue and green spinning dot get onto a cruise control..."
^^ This line stood out the most to me. It's so true, and I've been there. Much of my younger life was a "cruise control" situation with no thought or vision for the future. You're right that hard work is an inescapable reality--and approaching it with intention is a smart approach.
I turned 38 recently, by the way, and I also don't have life "figured out," so no worries on those days when you're feeling the uncertainty and aren't sure where to aim. The overall course is what matters, not getting to the destination in a straight line. This is something I remind myself of frequently as I navigate life as a Christian: God has a plan, but the path is never going to look the way I expect. Every step along the way is an opportunity to learn and grow. đ
happy belated birthday, Jen :)
I love this:
"I love tea. I love pink. I love Audrey Hepburn. I love my life."