Woke Up Like This #12

Day 13602: Woke up ready for life again, understanding the inevitability of living. Not afraid, and still anxious to know if it was right. Still uncertain of the path. Still questioning the narrative. “Learn to find your own,” came to mind, the words from a score of years ago. And still there is the question, “Have I found it?”

Sometimes it all feels perfect.

Other times it’s all a gamble.

Rarely does it all feel lost, and there are those times too.

The imagining of not having, or maybe worse: Missing out. Failing to have something, if only you had just acted differently. This fear of missing out, this uncertainty of commitment could stall, or outright destroy beauty & life. It could crush dreams & sour relationships.

To clarify, it was more than the fear of missing out, it included the fear of not knowing what else to do.

The lived pattern.

The creature comforts.

The fear of what it all would be if it changed, and then there were all the things that would be different. The inevitability of discomfort becomes the fear of foreign discomforts. The fear of not knowing, and when do we really know?

The game is predicting the future. This requires the past.

Rational life resource logistics. All strategy & tactical pursuits failed without resource logistics. It was all planning with an implicit understanding of being able to know. Then the house would be there, the clothes, the food, the money for anything else. Though, love & a sense of home, calm, comfort — these always came from inside. Stability, security, these too were imagined to some extent, but with them, love, home, calm, & comfort arrived. When you know where you will sleep, that you will eat & who will be there for you, peace may be easier to find, or fake at least. There is the sense that it can all be taken away in a moment of failure or bad luck.

This is the tragic accident. This is having a stroke. This is the earthquake.

We don’t get to know how it ends, at least not most of us and not right now. Right now we get to have this moment. This time. These people and these stories. The question becomes how to narrate life. How to make sense of the unknown using the knowing, the gifts of awareness. The integration of experience & other voices. The finding of love in the gap.

It happens, life happens, in the inbetweens, in the feelings. The thoughts, the stories, the pain & suffering, the sense of loss and missing out, these were the plagues of the internal experience. The result of not paying attention or attention paid too much on the illusions. Recognizing the now, the having and the living, the peaceful life arises. The grasping lets go. You play the hand you are dealt. Sometimes pocket aces aren’t the nuts, so there is the risk of overplaying. Humbleness and a regard of having enough buffered the risk. It was still important to recognize position & play from where you were. Here’s where feelings guided action.

Knowing arising not from mind, but from gut, from a felt sense in the body. A choice every moment to honor this, the senses. To trust the self to act in its best interest. The mind got in the way as much as it helped in this regard. It was all part of it. To ignore any nagging feeling or intrusive thought was failure to accept life as it is.

Wanting for more, greater impact, greater security, greater love — this was ok. Relying on these was premeditated failure.