Every evening on the farm where I rent a small, pink guesthouse on a plot of land once filled with rows of peppers just outside Todos Santos, the dogs start barking. The seven dogs that live here and the countless dogs in surrounding properties, too. Sometimes the turkeys’ gobbles echo the dogs and then the roosters call in. There is often traditional music playing somewhere, the squeal or two of a child, rumble of a muffler, airy rustling of palms, and many pretty bird sounds—whistles, coos, chirps, flutters and mating calls. Finally, under all of that, the crickets begin their tinny string sound. Filling the air is a special symphony in service of the end of day, a song for the sunset now burning off across the desert cape.
Service. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Who or what am I in service to? And who or what am I enlisting to be in service for me? Last spring and moving into summer, I felt an incredible urge to expunge the “wrong” things from my life—people and places that felt bottomless, where my efforts were never enough to get what I needed. I wouldn’t have articulated it as such at the time, but looking back, I recognize how this urge was driven by a burning desire to be more in service to myself. What would a life with my happiness at the very centre look like? To know the answer, I’d have to begin a game of elimination, deleting the things I once believed I needed in service of finding out what I actually wanted.
First, I ended the vicious cycle of my five-year romantic relationship. For good. (Maybe more on that later) Then, and not totally on purpose, I eliminated employment. After resigning from my full-time position, I intended to transition into a freelance contract with a former client but that quickly fizzled out. This sudden decline in income was an accidental gift because it forced me to face lingering doubts about whether or not I should remain in Montreal. I put my apartment on the market and within three weeks it was sold. I waffled about all my stuff, but eventually decided to move most of my clothes, books and furniture out West near my parents. At first, these eliminations were lightning fast, but then again, this sudden combustion occurred after years of asking myself the same question on repeat: is this really right for me? With my intuitive answer almost always being no. That ‘no’ had been quiet and overruled by attachments to various identities around “success”—career, relational, etc.
But then once I’d screamed NO at the top of my lungs during a fight with my now ex, everything was no. This clarity came as a kind of shock but one I could no longer deny. No to friendships that weren’t working, no to corporate roles I’d laboured in forced directions to achieve, no to cities and cultures that didn’t fit anymore, and perhaps in my most controversial and surprising elimination, no to 20 pounds of curves I’d body positivitied my way into accepting but never really learned to love.
As I sit here now occasionally looking up from my laptop to watch the sunlight froth across the pink wall of my casita, it all makes sense. But during these months of constantly eliminating every major structure and character I’d spent years, even decades building, it was a bit baffling. Why was it moving so easily when everything in my life had always been (felt?) so hard? I would feel positively beside myself with fear, but then my lived reality was going really well. It was chill. Nothing to fret about. There was grief to experience of course and some longstanding resentments to shake out, but on the whole, all signs pointed to the possibility that making decisions based on what I actually wanted would work out in my favour and feel pretty sweet. I had so much time to work on behalf of myself, hours to sort and pack, long mornings to walk and eat leisurely breakfasts out, evenings to simply sit and think, sort through the substance of my existence…all at my own pace.
