Do you feel you’re living your right life, or does something seem off?
This question nagged me for much of my adult life. In my book, Counting Zeros, I write about vocational angst – how it sometimes drove me mad. The easiest way for me to explain what I mean by congruence, or right-life, involves a story about my feet.
Years ago, I used to walk past a shoe shop on Kensington Church Street on my way to work. A big walker, who loved when the season permitted near-constant boot wearing, my right foot began to complain with calloused patches and hard, painful corns.
I rarely stopped at the window of the specialist shoe shop. They sold grotesquely comfortable-looking, soft, flat footwear in a rainbow of muted, middle-aged colours. But one morning I noticed this sign: Drop-in Chiropodist Appointments Available. My right foot turned toward the door.
“You shouldn’t have corns on one foot and not the other,” the chiropodist informed me. “Let’s look at your gait.”
I did as I was told and rolled up my trousers as she took a thick black marker to draw a lone vertical line down the lower half of each leg. She asked me to walk on a treadmill while she took a video. After, she showed me how those black lines bent towards each other. Like an upside down V, they failed to be the perpendicular lines they were meant to be. She told me to stand on what looked like a scale which had a surface of small, hard plastic baubles.
“Relax your posture,” she instructed, as she clicked a button and the baubles rose and fell, adjusting themselves to find and fit into the curves on the soles of my feet. With a damaged knee, one leg slightly longer than the other and collapsed arches (until this moment, I’d only ever been aware of the first of these mechanical issues), the scale lifted my skeleton into correct alignment, for the first time in its upright life. I felt incredible. My bones fell into place. I immediately agreed to the expensive arches she would get made for my boots.
Looking back now, I sensed a wrongness in my everyday life, an ill-fitted-ness that begged for more than corrective footwear. A more creative life – those were the only words I had for what I wanted back then. Getting there would take a long time, but I paid attention to the wrong feeling, that lack of congruence. I recognized that discomfort as information about how to course-correct.
Congruence comes from the Latin to meet together, agree.
We use the term to explain geometry, algebra and other mathematical forms of right-ness. But what if congruence also meant to be in agreement with life … to match up the corners and lines … to follow what you’re drawn to – whether it be writing or walking or mountain climbing or marrying that person or playing more golf or quitting your job to go off and join an off-the-grid commune. What if what you’re drawn to is exactly where life wants to meet you, where it agrees to support you? What if that feeling of off-ness, is here to guide you into congruence, towards all that is right.
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My absence from this blog these past two months has meant I have finally produced the first draft of my manuscript, Counting Zeros.
Special thanks to Lisa Doig for inspiring today’s word. Lisa is hosting an online summit designed to help you course-correct. It takes place at the end of February, over the course of two half-days. Spaces are limited and it’s completely free. Click here to learn more and grab one of those spots.
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