THE YOUNG MAN ON THE BUS

Look ahead. You are not expected to complete the task. Neither are you permitted to lay it down. — Talmud

When I turned fifty-four I left everything that was humming along with ease to accept a job three thousand miles away about which I knew very little.

I received an offer to be the executive director of a newly established institute in San Francisco. The institute's goal was to help people discern the negative behavioral patterns of their parents and understand which, if any, of those patterns continues to influence their lives today. It was a beautiful program, and I jumped at the chance to start a new life. I was idealistic and unrealistically optimistic about making such a big move. My five children had all left home, and I was newly divorced after twenty-seven years of marriage. I didn't move because I was unhappy or because things weren't working in my life. On the contrary, things were working quite well. I rather loved being single and had no trouble finding handsome young men who were happy to romance an older woman, and my successful counseling practice showed every sign of growing. I moved because the evolutionary headwinds of California offered the opportunity to find out what else I had inside.

But things didn't go as planned. Although I started out with enthusiasm and optimism, these feelings quickly faded. The institute and its founder were not what I expected, but in all fairness, I had not yet learned that change of this magnitude required a period of adjustment and big-time letting go. Within a few months the glow of California turned to the heartache of regret. I had ruptured my sense of place, killing any idea that I was in charge of my fifty-four-year-old life.

The temptation to move back to New Jersey was enormous. I had been too cavalier about letting go of the things I had worked very hard to accomplish. A major triumph had been the purchase of a gorgeous three-story townhouse that I filled with white carpets, red velvet sofas, enormous green plants, white silk drapes, copper basins filled with ivy, and a cherry wood, four-poster, queen-size bed draped with eighteen yards of nylon toile lying atop its frame that sat nestled in a sunny loft bedroom. That house was more than a house. It was the place where I stopped ironing the dishtowels and began living like a movie star. My townhouse represented the dawn of self-hood, romance on a level I had never known, and freedom of choice I did not know existed.

I was leaving behind beloved East Coast friends that loved and supported me over a lifetime. It had taken many years to develop these relationships that I was now deliberately forsaking. This action still takes my breath away.

Long walks on the white, sandy beaches of South Jersey became memories punctuated with such longing that I had to stop myself from thinking about them. Afternoon trips into Manhattan with sojourns up Fifth Avenue wearing four-inch heels, treating myself to lunch at the Plaza Hotel, and loving the affirming whistles from the hard hats all haunted me. But I was restless. A distinctly rich period of my life had ended. The next step in the journey appeared, and though I could not be certain where it would lead, I asked the clarifying question, "What is important?"

To compound things, the executive position in San Francisco was not a good fit for my skills and gifts, and I resigned after fifteen very difficult, tearful months. By this time, the feeling of loss and regret filled my life. I loved San Francisco from the day I stepped off the plane, but its magnificent skyline never trumped the inquisition overtaking my thoughts: Had I made a big mistake? The shadow of grief followed me everywhere I went in my new city home, and there was nothing I could do but hope that given time, I could embrace my new life. I was in the throes of a complex set of emotions brought on by the loss of familiar, everyday activities, beloved friends, and patterns of behavior that lay behind in New Jersey. Had I understood that grief expressed is grief transformed, I would have fared better. It would be a long time before I understood that embracing one's grief is a powerful tool for the evolution of the personality.

But no, I could not admit that I was miserable; instead, I put on a happy face. After all, I was voted the girl with the greatest smile in my high school graduating class of 456 students. I knew how to look good so others would not be alarmed that I might have made a poor choice. And of course, I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

I was somebody in New Jersey. In gorgeous, creative San Francisco I was starting from scratch. Several years would pass before I could admit, even to myself, that I was regretful of having made the move. I could not have foreseen the many marvelous people and deeply intense, creative, life-enhancing and fulfilling professional work that lay waiting for me to claim in California.

I even wondered if I had dislocated my life as a distraction from finally taking a good, hard look at myself. As a single woman relieved of thirty-three all-consuming years of hands-on mothering, I was most likely suffering from more than just a case of the empty nest syndrome. I was at the dawn of a new life cycle. It was brave to choose change at this level, and it was also very, very scary. I was closing one door and opening another without the slightest idea what I would find. I felt both joy and fear as new beginnings made their way through the corridors of my new life.

I felt like a trapeze artist deliberately letting go of the solid platform beneath my feet to fly through the air, suspended in time, with a trust that a new, solid platform would appear before me. Each time I reviewed why I moved, the answer was the same: I moved to California because something called me there. I simply had to go and would have regretted it all my life if I hadn't.

And then it happened. I was traveling to work on a very crowded 31 Balboa bus going to downtown San Francisco. All humanity was on the bus. Old, young, black, white, people with turbans, people tattooed with dragons and three inch Mohawks, people with purple hair, and people wearing black, three piece business suits. It was pure San Francisco, wildly diverse and wonderful! I loved the beauty of it all and was reminded of why I moved in the first place.

Then a clear voice was heard above the crowd. A young man wearing a crisp, white shirt and seated in the third row on the right side of the bus said to me, "Ma'am, would you like...