On Mysteries and Mistakes

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Barbara Ellen McMahon, author of the novella, Mrs. Rochester. It’s a sequel to Jane Eyre. This time, it’s Jane who’s locked in the attic and there’s a new governess. It’s available on Kobo, where it’s been getting rave reviews, or as a PDF download on Ko-fi.

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Vicki Noble has said that there are no mistakes. That what happens during the process of making something is sacred and organic.

Does that include the process of making a life, I wonder? Does that mean that what feels like a mistake or a misstep is just part of the process? Does it mean we can let ourselves off the hook? It’s a comforting thought.

Maybe it only applies during the times when we are consciously making. So the times that let us sleepwalk into something stupid can be filled with mistakes, while the lives we try to consciously build are sacred?

Or maybe it only counts when we’re arting, creating, being generative and not as an over-arching theme of our lives.

If we are just talking about the art, I may not always be happy with what comes out, may not want to put it on display, but I’ll have learned something from it. I’ll have practiced my craft. It might be finger exercises rather than a concert, but that’s fine, too. Finger exercises are valid, even if we don’t want to share them with an audience. And yes, the whole process is sacred. We could do with learning to value it a whole lot more than we do. We respect finished products and saleable merch. But the process, the people who live the process? Not so much. That could change. I think we’d all be better off if it did.

And maybe if it did, we wouldn’t be quite so hard on ourselves about the mistakes we’ve made building a life. We could understand that we were trying, that maybe the situation was beyond our skills, but the mistake was practice for getting it right later.

In the same vein, Thomas Merton said that life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. We had this on a poster in the upstairs hall when I was growing up. And much as I hated the nuns’ “It’s a mystery!” as a response to just about any theological question we threw at them (I thought they were lacking intellectual rigour), I like this quote. I much prefer to move through the mystery, using my intuition and what grace I can muster, rather than treat my life like a problem, like one long To Do list, like an endless series of self-improvement projects. Even with my life as it is now, I’d rather treat it with mystery and grace than by rolling up my sleeves and saying, “Right! Let’s fix this!”

I do apply problem-solving to specific situations, as seems appropriate. But not to everything. Not all the time.

Solving the problems is so satisfying, though, isn’t it? I can totally understand why people see all of life that way. It’s just so much easier. You make a list, you move through it, ticking boxes. You see a problem, you find a solution and it feels good. Your life is only lived surface-level, but it’s surface-level satisfying. Leaning into the mystery, letting it wash over you and carry you along, what do you have to show for it, except maybe a deeper understanding of life, a realization that, really, there are no mistakes? It can seem like precious little compared to a page full of ticked boxes.

Another way to look at it comes from Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley who said, “The unfolding of the unexpected becomes the energy that drives you. You discover how thirsty you are for exploration without analysis. You feel strangely at home in a place you can’t define. You are truly creating.”

I know they’re probably talking about art, about making things, but it’s also, I think, the way to live a good life. How we art is how we live, which is one of the reasons I believe everyone should art.

The unfolding of the unexpected has been my life for the past twelve years. I can step back, see it as an adventure and a mystery, something to be observed and explored, rather than something to be managed. I’m learning to be at home in a body in circumstances not of my choosing. It really is the creative path, even if it doesn’t lead to any actual art. To live this way is to create. And even though the pain and the exhaustion grind me down, I love the life I’m living. I’ve learned so much in the last twelve years. I’ve become, I think, a better person.

I thought I was in control before. I was becoming arrogant about it. Now I can see that control is an illusion. What I thought was me directing my life was just me being lucky. And now I’m not directing my life and I’m still being lucky.

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Don’t forget, my book, Mrs. Rochester, is available on Kobo or Ko-fi. Your purchase helps to support an independent author.