When I married Charles, he was in the Ph.D. program at Harvard to become an ethnomusicologist. I told him that I never thought I’d marry an academic. As it turned out, I didn’t.
When Charles married me, a lawyer like his father, he was surprised because he always thought that he’d marry an artist. As it turned out, he did.
In hindsight, I realize that each of us saw the real person inside the other when we tied the knot.
Charles ended up ditching the Ph.D. program and his potential career as an academic; he chose to be a stay-at-home parent when our twin daughters were born three years after we were married. By then, the Ph.D. program had literally taken the music out of him and so he threw the baby (his love of music) out the window with the bathwater (the Ph.D. program) the moment he held our precious newborns in his arms.
As for me, after 20 years of practicing law in law firms and in-house legal departments of global corporations, a revelation which must have been running underground for many years, surprised me in an “Aha!” moment: I am really an artist at heart! A well-paying corporate job with generous benefits could in no way satisfy my huge need to feed both my soul and my family; and my drive to move from passion to action, from intention to manifestation, and from imagination to creation.
Two people from two different cultures have created the Soul Play Family that neither of them had imagined in their wildest dreams growing up in their respective hometowns: Seoul, Korea (and later Flushing, New York) for me and Rockport, Massachusetts for Charles. My Korean parents sent me to Smith College thinking it was a “girls finishing school” and dreamed of me marrying a Korean doctor or lawyer after I graduated from college so that I could be well “taken care of” by a man of profession, status and financial means. Now I understand their well-meaning, but seriously misguided aspirations, but in my 20’s and 30’s, this was the source of many painful conflicts with my parents because I was not patterned after their aspirations.
I learned the hard way that I could not satisfy both my parents’ dreams on the one hand and my desire to live true to my own, unique, genuine pattern on the other hand. I didn’t marry a Korean: I married a Starrett whose ancestors came from Europe, such places as Scotland, England, Switzerland and Germany. I didn’t marry a doctor or lawyer: I married a musician who was in graduate school at the time. I didn’t marry to be “taken care of by a man of profession, status and financial means:” I chose to be the provider for my family and my husband would later choose to be the stay-at-home parent for our twin daughters.
Charles and I each learned and grew in our untraditional, but consciously chosen, roles with respect to our family. As we apprenticed ourselves in our respective roles and responsibilities, we learned that our authentic selves were on exile, yearning to come home. While I stayed loyal and true to myself in choosing whom I’d like to spend my life with, in my life’s work I followed a track that was not my own, unique, or genuine path. In lieu of following my parents’ wishes of “catching” a professional-husband for financial security and social status, I became a professional myself to prove to them that I didn’t need to marry someone to secure financial means or social status: I wanted to show them that I could acquire financial means and social status on my own.
The consequence of this decision was my choosing a career that was not in line with my passion, purpose and power. I chose my career largely based on my need and desire to prove myself to my parents; to show them that I didn’t need to marry someone for financial security or social status—that I could attain such on my own. Slowly, unconsciously, and gradually my passion, purpose and power receded and left my over-active left brain to conquer my whole self. My despondent right brain, heart and belly intuition were all locked away as I solely relied on my will power and can-do attitude to focus solely on “feeding my family” while neglecting my soul. In retrospect, this was not the best way to choose a career!
Living someone else’s vision of me, or even worse living to compensate for someone else’s vision of me, was painful, lonely and unfulfilling, and choosing what was convenient and expedient over what was true and right for me caught up with me over time. When my eyes were finally opened, I discovered not only that my inner well had become as dry as a bone but also that it had become cracked. I needed to mend the cracks in the bottom and walls of the well of my soul, before it could fill up again. As I mended my well, I was able to gradually turn my face away from the accomplishments, achievements, and acknowledgements that had defined me and my work during the first half of my life. As I oriented myself toward aligning my life with my values, I knew that the second half of my life would be about living my true life to leave my true legacy for my daughters, their children’s children and the world.
I had to wake up from living someone else’s dream and get REAL to: Remember who I was; Embrace all parts of me (good, bad, ugly); Activate and align with my core values; and Leave my legacy for the world. I could no longer have a life that felt isolated and separated from my soul mate and my soul children in my role as the sole provider for our family: each of their souls have chosen to be with me in this lifetime. I could no longer feed my family while neglecting to feed my soul. I could no longer deny the call to bring back my artist soul on exile. As I remembered my true identity as an artist with a need to create her own path, not someone else’s; embraced all parts of me and learned to integrate them all to be a whole person; activated and aligned with my core values of creativity, humanity, integrity and authenticity (CHIA) for joy; and shifted my paradigm to live the rest of my life to leave my legacy for the world, it became clear that my vocation was in the area of soul making and soul weaving at work and at home.
Life is too short and too precious to be doing something that does not make us come alive. There is no one but ourselves who can stop us from being the authentic self each of us can be in the world and for the world. Would you join me and Charles in exploring, experimenting, experiencing and expanding through play for JOY, ABUNDANCE, VITALITY, and a sense of COMPLETION beyond external accomplishments and achievements?