Diving In
Once upon a time I had a life I no longer loved and I ditched it. I ditched its ass hard.
Great, wondrous things came of that flying leap into god-knows-what. Or rather, great, wondrous voids descended in quick succession and over many years, and in them I continued to find myself huddled in the dark and in need of resuscitation.
A worthy endeavor, and not one to be taken lightly, but ever since I trekked into those inner-places I’ve been in a kind of limbo. Healed from old things, but landed at an impasse. If I’m not the Her that was, where do I want to go? How do I relearn the simplest things, like how to choose.
In the hollow days of knowing without belonging, I spent countless nights fretting about dwindling bank accounts, ever finding meaningful work, sucking up the courage to dream bigger, and wondering if I’d peaked in my twenties, when I was successful and my star was rising.
For the better part of five years it’s been an on-again off-again midlife crisis or whatever trendier thing we call it now when one has a panic attack about their very existence and life’s general ungainly gait.
Some people think I’m daft. They can’t imagine thinking so much about nothing or thinking so hard and still getting nowhere.
But I’d rather live slow and well. Life’s too short to be lost waiting for it to get better.
Anyway, there is no measure of greatness I hold dear which can be set down in numbers.
And as I begin to see the underbelly of the uglier things, I come to know it is not only a lack of unhappiness which makes us happy. There must be Good Things, too. My work is only half done.
And so now, these last few months have been a quest for positive growth. Quite without meaning to, or knowing I had done so, I gave myself permission to stop counting. To just follow whatever meandering paths looks attractive. To seek out goodness and joy, even if it didn’t make any sense at all.
And for the first time in I don’t know how long I wake up everyday excited.
Excited about the projects and prospects and ideas which make me feel alive. That I think will make the world a genuinely better place.
For the first time in forever, there are things I want in this world. Things I want to be and know and do and share. Many things I always knew and lost sight of, in the old way, and others I seem to have collected unwittingly, burrs caught in my hem during my wanders.
It may not seem much from the outside, but my inner cathedral is glowing. And only now do I realize it’s the light I’ve been looking for all along.
Que Sera Sara? 