The cliffs of time and discomfort

I don’t want to wake up when I’m 85 and wonder what the pain was all for if I never did anything with it. The hurt I went through isn’t what I need to live for but something must come out of so much rain… Through the floods, the fires, the losses, the loves, the lessons, the lies, and the lives, there must be something grander out there waiting for me to see.

All throughout my life, in school, by adults, friends, and others, I always heard I was meant to do something big. For a long time, I mistook their wisdom for lies I was fed, I misheard and I misread, but I see now, and it is better than I had ever imagined. I always thought they meant I had to save the world, find a cure, or resurrect the dead in order to fulfill that “big future” they deemed me worthy of. Possibly some did, and some meant it in a materialistic way. But I have found that the feeling of grandiosity never came from a degree or a job, or from how many subjects I aced, how much money I made, it came from something much quieter that for so long, I deemed small.

The feeling of change, of discomfort, of starting over. I learned that over solo travel and days spent in a different place all on my own, I was filled with a wholeness that I would never find in rooms filled with people. I found that the comfort I had was what was killing me, that being good at something was never the goal, and that it being easy was never the intention.

I am learning to love the unknown and appreciate all that I find in it. Comfort is a muscle that is never exercised and while I have the will, the stamina, the passion, and the courage to do it, why not? In removing that first barrier of even accepting the thought of change, I opened myself up to a world of possibilities.

The thing is most questions that come out of fear can be faced with another simple question… “so what?"

But what if I fall? So what, what if you don't, what if you soar? 

But what if I’m alone? So what? This is the perfect opportunity to get to know yourself, to fall in love with yourself, to experience things on your own without attaching the moment to someone else. And as Jean-Paul Sartre said, “if you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.” What if you make new connections, new people you get to love and who get to love you?

But what if it doesn’t work out? So what, what if it does? What if it ends up being something you could not live without, a new country, a new relationship, new jobs, new peace, new friends, a new home, whatever it is you are uprooting, let it happen. And it can’t not work out! It might not work out in the way you wanted it to, but expectations are just as lethal as not trying at all. You might not get everything you expected, but you might get more, and even if you go back, at least you tried. And now you even have a story to tell and an experience worth trying again for, after all, a small step is still momentum, and an object in motion stays in motion. Remember that new flora grows after natural disasters and isn’t that beautiful?

But what if I’m scared? You should be, it is new territory, new experiences, but so what? You get to choose the fear, are you more scared of taking the risk and it being so much better than you could ever imagine, or are you more afraid of what will happen if you never go? Fear is not the barrier, it is the catalyst, if it doesn’t scare you, then the dream isn’t big enough. 

You have time. You have time to try everything you want, to be each version of yourself that asks to be born and to bring to life every idea that sets your soul on fire. 

So when you find that the little spark is fuming out of you, let it, make that jump. As long as you live to walk another day and breathe in all that fills your very being, then you have another chance to learn, to love, and to live, and I mean truly live.

Over the mountain there lies a cliff where no one has ventured but the mountain was never in the way, it was the way. I made a home in the pasture by the cliff and I look back and find that the mountain doesn’t even look that monumental anymore. And if you ever want to find me, I’ll be here, make your own journey and I’ll tell you about mine sometime.

Till then, listen to that fire, it knows.