What Shall I Do With My Life Now?

Just before the move or early in a posting, a particular question arrives from new diplomatic spouses. Since I am not going to work, should I retrain into something I can do from anywhere? Or volunteer? Shall I dive into parenthood? Or be on ‘Team Diplomat’? Spouses bring it with urgency, as though the right answer were out there, and the only task is to find it.

I rarely answer it directly. The question being asked is almost never the question that needs my reply. And answering it too quickly tends to send people down a path they chose to relieve a feeling now rather than to build a new life.

The tool & the question underneath

Studying and volunteering are just tools, so are parenting and being a socially active diplomatic spouse. They appear so fast because they are easy to reach. A course has a start date and a volunteering role has an application. Helicopter parenting can begin this afternoon. And there is always another diplomatic event where spouses are welcome. Each offers the relief of a box ticked.

There is nothing wrong with any of them. The trouble is that they arrive before the question they are meant to answer has been asked at all.

That question is harder than which activity to take up. It asks them what they want from a life that has just been emptied of its usual shape. And it's often too big and too uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, that it pushes spouses to settle it quickly. Reaching for an activity helps you avoid sitting inside the larger one. It may even feel like progress but in reality, it’s just a delay of the real work.

Where I start instead

When a client asks what they should do, I ask them to stop thinking about the doing for a while. I know it's uncomfortable, and unsettling. But it's also rewarding in the end.

I ask them to sit with me and look at where they are. What are they bringing into this in-between. Their pains and losses, but also their expectations and dreams they may not have said aloud to anyone, possibly even to themselves. What do they need to set down before they can pick anything new up? Most people arrive at a posting still holding on to the life they left, and some of it has to be put down before there is room for what comes next.

Then I invite them to let grief in. For a while, it becomes our company, something to be felt rather than managed around. Is it painful? Of course. Is it uncomfortable? No doubt. But the person allows themselves to mourn their working life, place in the world, and even a version of themselves.

And then, I encourage them to look at what actually matters to them. Their values, their meaning. Who they are underneath the job title they have lost. What they would want to be true of their life.

And only after that do we arrive at the practical question of how to make it happen through action. Only then do the studying and volunteering find their place, as do the parenting or being on ‘Team Diplomat.’ They become expressions of something chosen rather than a way to fill a silence that frightened them.

Why it cannot be rushed

Holding a question this large, without closing it with a quick action, asks something most of us were never taught to do. We are practised at deciding and poor at waiting. And let’s be honest, a diplomatic posting rewards the appearance of being settled. The spouse who has filled their days looks confident, while the one still asking what they want looks lost. Alas, the appearance is often misleading. Looking the part can pass for being settled long enough to fool almost anyone, even themselves.

In her book Comfortable with Uncertainty, Pema Chödrön writes about learning to stay with discomfort instead of rushing to escape it. Letting there be room for not knowing, she says, is what gives us space. For a diplomatic spouse, that space is where the grief gets felt and where the real question can finally be asked.

So before you reach for the course or the cause, or board that plane, where do you want this posting to take you? I would like to know.

Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash