army of love

If I learned nothing from my dad – who am I kidding I learned everything from my dad – I should have learned that this whole ‘self-employed’ thing feels remarkably excellent. Two weeks in and I am becoming vibrantly aware of two observations, so rudimentary at their core, that I wonder how I have missed them for so long.

1. Everything past lives in impossible to change shadows.

2. Everything future is wispy and untenable.

The present is the only thing we have any ‘control’ over. The future is for constructive planning and the past for lessons learned and not to be dwelt upon. I am decidedly making this my approach to all my full-time freelance work and how I approach business/life in general.

The energy in my mind is completely wasted on floundering around in either of those illusory places. Sort of like when you keep a new sofa covered in plastic because you want it to remain in the future, how it was in the past. But really you just end up with a sweaty butt from sitting on sticky plastic in the present. Nobody likes a sweaty butt.

I considered expending time and energy to fight against being fired. But this tiny David against the scale of their corporate Goliath filled me only with Anxiety and Anger. Basically my two least favorite words that begin with the letter A. (Also appendectomy, that is another unfortunate A word.) Plus I have fairly questionable sling-shot skills and all of these lessons can never be unlearned. Sometimes your pages in life turn because you can’t bring yourself to realize that you have been re-reading the same lines for too long. So the past can keep it’s gluey feet to itself, I am moving on and up. Higher and higher, Universe, please and thank you very much.

Being terrified of the unknown and the uncertain were the biggest reasons I tried to navigate life like a cautious captain. Trying to drag the dock and harbour with me out to sea. Never getting very far and always feeling a bit trapped.

Turns out that clinging to all that fear of uncertainty actually helps nothing at all. Things always work out one way or another. They always do. Trust and faith. Neither of those words hold much power in the past or future, but in the present they wield legions of purpose. Worry – I am slowly learning – just serves to make you (sea)sick of your own life. Absolutely everything is uncertain in it’s very essence. I am discovering that the freedom in that is endless possibility and not Fear. Which incidentally is my top least favourite F word, followed by a close second with Fava Beans, spoiled for eternity by Hannibal Lector.

Instead, I am building a daily practice of switching the channel from the staticky future and the boring reruns of the past. To observing only the current picture. I am in control of all of these channels. You are NOT your mind. Everywhere in this life should feel like home. If some places and people fight that in you, change those channels.

The army of love and support that nimbly mobilizes around me every time something dislodges in life, fills my soul with magnificent glittering light and waterfalls of flowers. And I send that super charged right back to each and every one of you.
It’s all good.