The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration — how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else? – Rebecca Solnit
Tomorrow we are going to go for a ‘proper’ walk on our land. I’ve only done the shorts-and-flip-flops and the slightly more difficult Keen sandals version of getting to know it. Tomorrow we are going for the rubber-boots-and-long-pants version. (Rubber boots because: snakes.) I am so scared of how hot I am going to get, and how much climbing there is to do in those rubber boots. I caught myself making an excuse not to go, and then I remembered: it’s our land. Ours. I GET to do this.
Somehow I have managed to create a life that means I have to look at and face down all of the things I am most afraid of, all of the things I don’t like about myself, and all of the ways I am not living up to my potential all at once. I didn’t really get that until just this moment.
People ask me all of the time, “So what are you going to do?”
I guess my answer right now is: first we are going to be very lost.
I don’t know how this is going to turn out. We have no maps. I have no-one to show me the way. I have no HR department and no advisory board. There isn’t a single e-course out there that can help us. We get advice from others on a daily basis, and we are very quickly learning how to sift the good advice out of the thick layers of fear.
Everybody’s afraid. Everybody. And the clearer I get about myself and who I am and what I am here to do, the more I want to understand this piece – all while I am repelled by it. I want to believe that it will all be okay, that if I just hold the happy thought, I’ll be able to fly. But it is in our nature to be afraid. My practice, it would seem, for the foreseeable future, is to feel the fear and then venture into the unknown with as much faith and as much brains as possible.
Look for the light, but bring a flashlight.
Open your heart, but lock your door.
Enjoy your land, but wear rubber boots.
xo
