Shake well. Settling is natural.

I took a slow sip of this new beverage--I’m pretty sure it promised me two servings of fruit and two servings of veggies, but whose counting? I forgot my lunch and this bright orange pulpy drink--almost expired, found at the Price Right across the street--is a tasty substitute. When I read the instruction at the bottom of the bottle, I resounded with the explanation. Shake well. Settling is natural. Shake well because settling is natural. Blended fruit drinks are not the only things in which settling is natural.

For the last several years, the idea of “settling” has meant a number of things to me. I used to agonize at the thought of settling anywhere because I always wanted to be free to move and go and journey elsewhere. Settling was a trap, and felt like disappointment at best and death at worst. Someone once said “never settle because where you settle is where you die”--and when I think of settling in spiritual terms, I couldn’t agree more.

I am no longer surprised when the song “The Sound of Settling” by Deathcab finds its way onto mixed cds friends have made for me over the years (so far, I have four cds with this song, from four different times of my life). “I’ve got a hunger, twisting my stomach into knots”, reads the very poppy verse. Settling happens when we neglect to let our impulses out? Maybe. In recent years, settling has become something to fear or resist. If I should move to Harrisburg after graduation, for example, I may settle and never leave...and this would be a great shame. It is the same thing that drives me out of my comfort zone, again and again, into new experiences with people who have different realities. And yet. My bottle tells me settling is natural.

I think it is, too, when we think of settling in terms of location. It makes sense that we are drawn to seek calm and rest in one place. There is comfort in staying and a kind of beautiful sacrifice in committing and investing. I think I could eventually see this beauty and seek this comfort sometime in my life, even if that seems highly improbable now--again, in terms of location. In between dreams of adventure that involvement movement, I have recognized dreams in me to put down roots and remain dedicated to something.

There is a kind of beauty, too, in a person who is settled within her/himself, regardless of location--those who understand what it means to be both an outsider and a vital part of one’s community, who live in between the now and the not yet. And so, since I often claim a restlessness and general resistance to settling (very generation Y), I take these thoughts on settling as a friendly warning to shake well--not to shake arbitrarily or to shake lopsidedly or with wrong intent or shake just for a good time. Can one be deliberate in shaking or is intentional shaking inherently impossible? I am undecided. But I would like to shake well and settle naturally, wherever I go, so as to learn how to be home where I am, at peace while I grapple with my discontent, rooted while I engage my rootlessness, and present while I hope for the future.

And that's my lunchtime thought. Now, the orange drink that spawned this post--worth investing in again or should I stay away from it because it actually produces in me crazy thoughts?