What’s Your Relationship with the Unknown?
We have been taught to achieve and to keep busy as a way of life. Often, stuffing our homes with the latest cool stuff and stuffing our lives with activities. There is a whole industry that was developed around time management and ways to track our to-do lists. Productivity is the name of this game.
I often hear people say, I don’t have time for myself or I don’t have time to think. But the past few years allowed each of us, in our own way, to see life from a different vantage point. For some, it was pure hell, while for many, it was an opportunity to reflect. There was nothing but time to face ourselves and our choices.
Facing Ourselves
And when we started to experience life in a different way, we may have not known what to do with ourselves. For many families with young kids, for example, life changed in a flash. And we will be witnessing the mental health impact of isolation on our elderly for the next decades. Having our work lives, and mobility, put on hold jarred us to the core. And, it was personal.
Some were thrown into endless Zoom calls and work became even more challenging as everyone was at home now and there was no balance to uphold. For anyone who was able to see this period of time as an opportunity to pause, it was a needed time of solitude and healing. When else would we have been able to sit with our challenges and become aware that we have choices that we can make?
Taking a break and stepping out of difficult situations gives us the opportunity to see things more clearly. But it is a choice in a world where we have been conditioned to numb ourselves from the “harsh realities of life.” For me, it continued to show me that we have created and inherited a world where suffering is a way of life and there is another way.
As Below, So Above
Living in nature helped me see the intelligence of nature. I had an opportunity to work on a film called Fantastic Fungi, which enlightened me on the level of community, communication and intelligence that happens beneath our feet between trees, plants and fungi. Mycologist Paul Stamets reminds us that “Mycelium is Earth’s natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate.” Working on the film inspired me to step out of a difficult situation and have the courage to make healthy decisions. I learned to follow my own internal guidance instead of being told what was good or right for me. I learned to explore my relationship with the unknown.
When your heart is telling you to step away, do you listen to the whispers of your heart and gift yourself time to explore? If you don’t, ask yourself what’s stopping you from becoming aware of your resistance. And if you are, what small steps can you take to listen more intently to your inner guidance?
I was always taught to seek the advice of experts and that others had my answers. But I learned early on that this was not true for me. My opportunities were in my hands to experiment and experience and I started choosing to see the possibilities in even my most pressing problems.
Only You Know Where Your Comfort Lies
And while it may seem the external world is falling apart and dying, there is birth all around us in every moment. There is a lot of darkness that is coming to the surface and there is a quiet movement of people who are simply pioneering healthy ways of living. We are standing between worlds right now and living in awareness is key.
It’s the people we align with that make life flow forward, or hold us back. When you practice the art of pausing, in your own way, you can start questioning what no longer belongs in your life–whether it’s beliefs, people, or situations. And it allows you to choose what you are walking away from and what you want to create.
This is the beginning of the journey that is taking shape for many of us when we are ready to start questioning everything and become more comfortable with our relationship with the unknown. Author Paulo Coelho shares in Brida, “Life is too short to be wasted in finding answers. Enjoy the questions.”
