New year, new questions
by Cindy La Ferle

Patience isn't one of my virtues. Having been raised in the culture of instant gratification, I'm accustomed to fast-cooking rice that's ready in 10 minutes. I watch prime-time television dramas that wrap up neatly in less than an hour. Waiting for anything makes my palms sweaty -- another symptom of the "hurry sickness" that afflicts most Americans today.
  Now in midlife, I'm starting to realize that patience is more than a virtue. It will be essential to my sanity and my career survival.
  Late last year, my journalist friends and I learned that newspapers and magazines around the country were cutting staff, going paperless, or folding entirely. Popular columns and features were zapped with little or no warning -- though most of us had read the proverbial writing on the wall. A constant supply of free content is available online now, prompting readers to drop their subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. Ad revenue is shrinking.
   Saddest of all, our own Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News announced they'd be cutting home delivery to three editions per week, beginning in March. Meanwhile, the Daily Tribune of Royal Oak, which carried my Sunday column for nearly 14 years, also reduced its print version to four days from six per week.
  It's hard not to feel nostalgic about all of this. I was still using an electric typewriter at Michigan State University when I snared my first paid byline in The Detroit News. Years later, I published a few pieces in the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine. I still love the heady scent of newsprint as much as I love holding a real publication in my hands -- with or without my byline. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't know if I'll adjust to reading most of my news online.
   And I'm worried about everyone who's employed in the newspaper business. Like Detroit's auto industry, journalism is in a state of flux-and so are those who practice it.
Meanwhile, living with the unknown is a tremendous challenge, especially for writers who were trained to keep digging for answers.
Shifting gears  Reinventing any career at midlife takes pluck and perseverance. But like dozens of my writer pals, I'll have to do some serious thinking before shifting gears completely. I'll have to force myself to pull back, get clear, and wait for wisdom (and new opportunities) to dawn.
  Zen masters call this the art of non-doing. Non-doing shouldn't be confused with indifference or sloth or passive acceptance. Non-doing is being poised and open to unforeseen possibilities. In The Woman's Book of Confidence (Conari Press), author and therapist Sue Patton Thoele calls it "Sitting with 'I don't know.' "
  "Enduring the unknown is draining," Patton writes. "Whether it is waiting for the results of a test, wondering about the outcome of a job interview, or questioning whether a particular relationship is healthy for us, we have a tendency to want to know now."
   This is easier said than done, of course. When something in our lives changes abruptly, our first inclination is to start scheming or plotting a new course. If we're creative types, especially, we might scramble to set something new in motion -- anything to prevent appearing stagnant. Yet most of us can recall a time when we've spoken too soon or acted too quickly, spoiling our chances at gaining the very thing we've hoped to achieve or acquire.
Living the questions Of course, not everyone can afford the luxury of waiting for a career to redesign itself. Or for new opportunities to fall in our lap.There are groceries to buy; kids to send to college. Sometimes we have to take a job -- any job -- to pay the bills. But in the meantime, while we're making ends meet, we can try to remain open to new options we hadn't considered before.
  In college, I read a wonderful little book, Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke. Written in 1903, the book is a series of letters written by the poet Rilke in response to a student who was struggling with the writing life. "Live your questions now," Rilke advised, " and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers."
   I'm also reminded of the beautiful glass bowl my neighbor gave our family for Christmas last year. After we ate the holiday cookies it contained, I washed the bowl and gave it a place of honor in the middle of my kitchen counter. It has remained there ever since. I want this bowl to remind me to live my questions. Keeping it empty is a deliberate, symbolic act – an act that signifies the effortless beauty of remaining open to new potential.
   Returning home from the fruit market this week, I had to fight the impulse to fill it with fresh apples or avocados. Like the spaces on a brand-new calendar, empty bowls seem to beg to be filled. Catching glimmers of the late afternoon sun today, my empty glass bowl looks receptive, tranquil and clear as crystal. Which is exactly what I aspire to be when I have no choice but to wait or make peace with the unresolved..
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Cindy La Ferle writes on home, family, and women's issues from Royal Oak, where she is Writer-in-Residence for her public library. Writing Home, her award-winning collection of stories on motherhood and women's issues, is available on Amazon.com and is distributed nationally to bookstores by Wayne State University Press. Proceeds from Cindy's book sales are donated to shelters serving the homeless in Oakland County, Michigan.

Visit Cindy La Ferle's Home Office and Blog: www.laferle.com You may also contact her directly at cindy@laferle.com