Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and transitions; thus, doorways, gates, passages, and endings are within his purview. He's usually depicted with two faces, one facing the future and one facing the past.
A couple of weekends ago, some friends and I had planned to hike to Lake Valhalla and through some twist of fate involving a woodpecker, ended up at Janus Lake instead.
We gave our trip organizer a hard time but it was actually quite a lovely, quiet hike; certainly Valhalla's lesser-known and far-less-trod brother.
Perhaps that is how all transitions happen, with some degree of planning (past facing) but really the possibility of veering completely off course (future facing). And if one is open to what the future brings, regardless of whether it was planned or unplanned, it could be quite grand.
As I'm getting ready to go to Ankara, Turkey, next year to do a teaching fellowship, there has been a slew of things that I'm preparing for with some anxiety. First and foremost currently is trying to get my place ready for rental. Last week, a couple of guys from my church came to help me dispose of a behemoth of a TV that I've had for over 5 years. It's served me well but it's too big a presence, especially for someone who doesn't watch much TV and not something I want to lug through a move. However, it's 170lbs and impossible for my puny self to move. These three guys were gracious enough to come and lug it down two flights of stairs along with some bookshelves, an old computer desk I've had since possibly college (?), and various other odds and ends. As soon as it exited my place, the thought, "I'm free!" popped into my head and it's true; sometimes our possessions end up being a carbuncle that we can't seem to easily shed. I was just at a garage sale on Whidbey Island and the house belonged to an elderly lady who was moving into a senior living situation. Since it was the last of a three day sale, everything was up for grabs at half off. I got some nice kitchen utensils for a quarter each as well as a canning kit and a vintage white enamel Dansk cooking pot both for $2.50. But what made me kind of sad was realizing that this woman had spent a lifetime accumulating some nice stuff and not even her kids wanted it because there was so much of it. So I think it put me in a good mindset to reduce and recycle my own stuff.
In light of all this, I think it's appropriate to close quoting Henry David Thoreau, who said:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary....Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportions." (
Walden "Where I Lived, What I Lived For")
This, too, is freedom.
