After visiting family in Houston, going to an idea conference in Munich, traipsing through countryside museums in Copenhagen, the thing I’ll miss most from my two-week Empty Nester World Tour was the austere beauty of Greenland. Which is a surprise.
Greenland is a little… bleak. When I last visited in 2018, I was glad to get the work trip over with and return to the actual green land of Virginia. But this time, the vast emptiness of the space was a breath of fresh air. A place where I could just be and enjoy the act of being, without trying to fill that space with doing.
There is something about not having to do anything. No expectations, no should’s, no regrets. In Munich or Copenhagen, I felt like not visiting a museum or not walking the city was somehow squandering my time. In Greenland, when there was nothing to do, it was actually a pleasure.
I’ve found myself in a mental space much like Greenland. For the first time in my life, my future is wide open. I’m a 54-year-old widow, and there are no sanctioned, prescriptive, you-must-do-this-or-prove-that paths for the likes of us. There are no should’s… here or in Greenland.
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Specifically, I was visiting the Pituffik US Space Base.
It's 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle and totally out of the ordinary human experience. Because most people (besides the Inuit) have never experienced land or days or climate like this, the location feels like it has a no rules, no framework, no norms for how to be and act. Things as basic as sleeping and eating schedules, running errands, hanging out with friends look entirely different here.
Very few human beings want to be stationed in Greenland. But I met a young Danish woman working at our base who loves it, who says she never wants to work anywhere else. She said she appreciates the simplicity of life and the closeness of the small community. In other words, she sees Greenland for what it has, not what it doesn’t have. She’s not trying to impose the norms — the should’s — of the rest of the world onto it. Societal norms on natural beauty (icebergs and tundra anyone?). Societal norms on what happy living requires (Malls! Movie theaters! Fancy cars! Whole Foods! Nail salons!).
We spend so much time trying to have what everyone else has and do what everyone else does, because if everyone has/does it, it must be a good idea (famous last words). Even in 2018, a year and a half after Mike’s death, I was still trying to figure out what came next. Notice the phrasing: not what I wanted to do next, but “what came next.” What I was supposed to do next.
Stepping onto Greenland was like stepping into a space where ‘supposed to’ had ceased to exist… and in 2018 I hated it. It didn’t feel productive enough — I had s**t to do and Greenland was just sitting there silently, staring at me! And it was true, I had teenagers to raise, college saving accounts to fill, and an internal sense of security to rebuild from the ground up. With luck, stubbornness, and plenty of help, I did all of those things. And now I can see what Greenland the place and Greenland the inner state have to offer.
Mike’s death slingshotted me out of the mainstream storyline.
The safe orbit of the solar system where I knew what to expect and what came next and what counted as “successful” was in a moment all out of reach.
It took a massive amount of effort to get back on my proverbial feet, but now that I have… holy smokes. It’s like I’ve re-oriented my life to my own center of gravity (because I had to), while so many are still orbiting some ideal of a perfect life, falling into it but never quite reaching it. Not me. I no longer have a Sun of expectations, drawing me towards it.
This is the first time in my life where I don’t know what comes next. I can gather experiences, make connections, grow, and change without an objective or outcome. Without a metric for “success”. I can plan less. I can surrender more. I can just enjoy the continued journey of transformation. I can explore what it means to be a human in this world — to be me.
It’s like I was laying on the ground, and the police drew a chalk outline around my body. The death of old me. Now, in a dreamlike state, I’m standing up and looking down at that empty chalk line, thinking, “Who was that, that very defined person? I don’t even recognize that one-dimensional representation of me! I am not defined that way anymore.”
It’s hard to not just throw a million metaphors down on the page. Because this feeling is visceral rather than intellectual. I am free in a way I didn’t know I could be.
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The light in Greenland is the same way.
Even with another million metaphors, I couldn’t impart its clarity and simultaneous mysticism to you through these clunky words.
Which is actually refreshing. I don’t have to turn it into a question to be answered — ie “why do I feel this beauty?”
I can just let it wash through me like an electrical current or however the hell it feels when we are moved. I’ve made enough space between the molecules of my body between 2018 and 2023 that this mysterious force can then take up that empty space and make me feel something. Something grand and majestic and undefinable.
It’s like the “question” or even “problem” of my future. What now? I don’t have to answer that question. I can just let the feeling of spaciousness move me, and see where I end up.
In possibility,
Sue
If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:
* Post #3: What are we actually afraid of? Why dissecting our fears around death & dying is key to living a better life.
* Post #11: Restoring the magic of time. How stepping (or being shoved) off the hamster wheel helps us reclaim our sense of possibility, serendipity, and flow.
* Post #17: Mystery is my religion. We can’t escape chaos. But we can reframe it.
* Post #24: Skin in the game. Relying on our senses to get us out of our head and into our lives.
* Post #35: Enough waiting to “rest in peace.” Appreciating the good things in life while we’re still around to do it.
> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.
