Pearl-Searching and Sock-Matching

I have to say, I'm not enjoying this working-very-hard-again thing.
I'm not enjoying spending my nights and weekends at the computer, head in work.
Not enjoying never being fully in the full moment with my family but instead, filling my life with an ocean of incomplete and unfinished moments that just make everyone grumpy.
The year that I spent writing and being a mum seems like a long-ago dream, fading into the that-was-so-nice-puddle of "things that used to be fun".
And it's a shame because I think I was particularly talented at not working.
Waking to the knowledge that my days were endless sea of beckoning potential. 
Without practicing or panicking in any way, I drifted happily  from working too much, for too long, far too often...... to not working at all.
It was a seamless transition.
At 50 I feel it should be time to start working less, not more.
"But what did you do all day?" friends ask me, when I explain that I feel a return to joblessness is definitely a day dream of mine.
And I try to remember.
Our house was definitely tidier than it ever has been before or since.
We had more pairs of matching socks.
I was always here when the kids got home from school.
I had time to sit down and really talk to them if they wanted me to or, at the very least, provide them with an unending supply of almost healthy snacks.
Dinners were unburnt and mostly ready in time. 
I caught up with friends -not just a rushed meeting but with time to talk and, more importantly, to listen.
I wrote and wrote...and laughed and laughed..
I did things because I wanted to, not because I had to.
I did what I thought to be right, not what I knew to be wrong because the powers-that-be told me I had to.
I said what I knew to be true, instead of conveying a twisted version of the truth.
I felt complete and in control of all that matters to me.
"Ok, ok," my friends say, backing away from the wave of almost desperate determination that they can feel washing towards them. " We were only asking. Stop working then....if it's so important. Don't explain it to us anymore.  We believe you."
And so I stop talking.
But I can feel them still.
Those dreamy days so full of possibility.
I do know how lucky I am.
I know there are people forced to stay at home through illness or redundancy or injustice.
I can imagine how they must long to be part of something bigger than themselves, how they must feel that their four walls have become a prison., that they are losing their identity in a career-oriented world, that what they do has no value. .
I understand that it is easy to feel that you have been forgotten.
But what is important, is that we do not let our jobs define us.
What is important, is not what we do but who we are.
What matters is not whether we get promoted or follow a career trajectory that was planned by someone else but that we care enough about each other to make the world a better place.
We are, each of us, the carriers of a hidden pearl.
They are our certainty and our hope.
They are all that we believe in and know to be true.
They are what makes life worth fighting for.
In these times of swirling confusion and fear, when all that was certain yesterday seems uncertain today, those pearls are the potential we have been reaching for.
And we don't need to wear suits or ties  or high heels to find it, we just have to let go of our vulnerability and open our protective shells.

Whatever we do, whoever we are:  worker, dreamer or just be-er, all that matters is that we find our hidden pearl and make it glow.
And if you can do it, so can your partner or your children or your neighbour
One glowing pearl might not be enough, but a whole string of them.....that might just be indestructible.
So, perhaps today, instead of sitting in front of my computer, I will start the search for my inner pearl- I wonder if I can find it while I am matching socks!