Finding The Goldilocks Zone

After cocooning with my pets to help Sophie recover from cataract surgery this past two months, I have arrived at a decision, similar to what I arrived at during the Covid lockdown: I am going to move, yet again, a fourth time since retiring to New York state just five and a half years ago!  With plenty of time for reflection and contemplation during this ‘time out of time’ sort of extended moment, I am reemerging with a greater awareness of where I am at in life currently, what my goals are for the future, and how I can best advance toward those goals for myself, my pet family, and all concerned. 

Sophie is doing “better and better every day, in every way,” which is my mantra with her as we continue to apply now 7 (no longer 11 or before that, 23!) daily eye ointments.  Her eyes and vision are doing very well, thankfully.  No longer with cataracts but now with new lenses, all the hunkering down and ritual of ablutions (eye ointments) has proven worthwhile.  Now I am helping her regain her strength and gain back some weight that she lost through the ordeal.  We seem to be on a good track to full recovery. I am hopeful we along with our cat Emily will have several years yet of our togetherness and wellness.

As author of the book, Better Endings (2022, see right panel), of course a lengthy lockdown or cocooning has led me to evaluate current conditions in relation to future-oriented goals—and means.  I have come to several realizations.  While I love my hometown where I have lived this past three years, and always will, in all honesty my life here is not fully what I had been hoping to establish when I moved here.  People in this small village community are quite friendly, good people, and I feel comfortable here in that regard. But there also seems to be somewhat of a small, closed community consciousness.  While people are friendly and accepting generally, I have not found much openness to new ideas, and people appear so busy in their well-established lives among my generation that the good friends I enjoy here were already my good friends (and nearby sister) before I arrived.  The move I am now contemplating will relocate me and my pet family even closer to all three of these close relations while also expanding a universe of diverse possibilities for interaction, fellowship, and service much greater than I have been able to establish in my beloved hometown.  We will be just some 35 minutes from here but in a vastly different setting. 

I feel somewhat like Goldilocks (though not an intruder of any bears’ home!), looking for the “just right” situation for moving forward in a better-endings direction.  Flexibility is the key, coupled with contemplation while remaining open to inner guidance. The move I am now beginning to prepare for will not occur for another year and a half, as it will take me that long to increase my savings enough to put money down on buying a condo, which is my current intention (or I might rent first for a year or so there).  We would live in a mid-sized city—not too large, not too small—, near lots of desirable resources and cultural and spiritual venues but also in a safe, not too urban locale, with proximity to a state park and public access waterways.

I am fortunate to be living alone with my pet family and not tied down to an out of home job.  I am grateful to have the freedom and resources needed to follow my heart and inner guidance.  I hope to be in an area where I can also be of greater service.

It helps to write this out.  I was beginning to feel like I could be simply “bolting” (again?), or accepting defeat regarding some of the intentions that brought me to my current locale.  But I cannot push a river to shift in directions it simply is not meant to flow. I have realized many of the potentials here already and have resolved some karmetic ties along the way. 

images are from pixabay.com

So, it is time to begin to redirect this starship toward a more ‘habitable zone,’ with plenty of advance time for exploration and preparations. My interpretation of the Goldilocks tale is that when she stumbled upon the Three Bears’ residence, she went inside to try on the various archetypal roles of Mama Bear, Baby Bear and Papa Bear. The Mama Bear role in the story was the one that was “just right” for Goldilocks then.

May we all engage the freedom to question and to explore along the heroic pathway of finding our center along the greater journey Home.