Untouched

The last few days I spent debating whether to write a new year’s post or not. One thing I was certain of was that, if I did, it would not be the usual ‘oh, so this is what I’m going to do next year’. If I learnt anything last year then it was that my to-do lists, as useful as they have been in the past, have also led me to an inner roadblock. I’ve ended up with too many ‘shoulds’ and too little ‘wants’ or ‘would love tos’.

If you have visited my blog before you will know that my feathers have been ruffled quite a bit over the course of the last two years. In 2016, even though the outer storm seemed to have settled, there was quite an inner storm taking place. It was a slow and painful saying good-bye to the certainties I once held. About what my life would be like. Where I wanted to be. How I wanted to be. Or, better, how I thought I wanted to be.

Now, for some reason, I don’t feel this pull anymore. In fact, I’m starting to think that it might even be a good thing that those certainties have been ripped to shreds. I certainly didn’t feel that way when it happened. In fact, I felt like clinging onto them for dear life. In the meantime I have come to realize that I only felt that way because I had nothing to replace it with. Yet. And I still don’t quite do. In terms of a list of things I want to achieve.

No, it’s more of a process I’ve started. A process of finding out what remains of me once all those things and thoughts and patterns that once made me up fall away and give space to I don’t know what. For the first time in my life I simply don’t know. At first I found this scary as hell. Since I used to be all about knowing. And doing. And fixing. And improving. But somehow, along the way, all of this has lost its appeal.

So what now? I don’t know. I will find out, I guess. And while I still feel somewhat uneasy and uncomfortable about this, I also feel a little excitement sneaking in. I recently read a quote somewhere, along the lines of ‘when nothing is certain, everything is possible’. I’m not usually a big fan of those calendar page wisdom nuggets. This one did hit a little nerve, though, and it’s easy to see why.

So I guess if there is any new year’s resolution for me to make this year then it would be to practice leaving the fear of the unknown behind and welcoming with curious excitement the possibilities lying dormant in that space of uncertainty. In actual fact, as I now realize, nothing has ever been certain anyway. I just wasn’t aware of it. So all I want to do now really is to take good care of myself, giving lots more space to my ‘would love tos’ while making my way through this untouched territory called the new year.

me

Photo (c) Pixabay/jarmoluk