[4] The Sunday Collections: The Difference Between "Ideal" and "Right"

First, a quote I saw this week and loved:

I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Live your way into the answer.

As good as this past season has been, it hasn't been without it's hard questions and moments of wrestling. I've been trying to understand this nagging restlessness in me. What I'm slowly realizing is that I got caught in a little trap of living to prove or justify myself, rather than living as my best self. 

Expectations are strange. Sometimes my ideals and what is actually right for me aren't the same thing. I waste time chasing wishes and miss the rich substance of right here. This whole season, for me, has been one of forcing myself to stay, to simplify, to slow down and fly under the radar for a bit. It has been humbling on many levels. That isn't a bad thing.

Sometimes I wait for some magic feeling or a direct sign to show me I'm in the right place or doing the right thing. When I get stuck in this place, what I'm really doing is glancing up at all the faces out there to make sure they are all still smiling. I don't even know who those faces are, but they hold powerful sway. I didn't even realize I was living so tethered to approval from these vague mystery people but apparently I was. 

I've asked myself so many times: why isn't this working? I've scattered questions all over this season, trying to find answers, and finally resigning myself to gathering evidence from noticing my habits, my responses, my intuition. What I realized is embarrassingly simple: it isn't working because it isn't right. I was chasing dreams that didn't fit. I was wishing for things that looked very sparkly and fulfilling, but I wanted them for all of the wrong reasons. 

It is kind of like what they tell you about dating: you can't have a strong relationship with another person in that way until you know yourself first. In other words: don't date out of insecurity. It's the same difference between running away and exploring options. With running, you are constantly trying to find that "one thing" to fulfill you, define you, satisfy you. With exploring, you know yourself already and you're trying to find the best fit. One leads to a persistent hollowness and an insatiable appetite. The other one leads to a peaceful sense of knowing this is right.

How do you begin to know yourself? It comes through poking around a bit and finding those things that make you feel alive and passionate and capable and doing more of it. It comes through building a tight circle of people you trust and who will tell you the truth, lovingly, when you start to fall off track. It is learning how to be really honest about what you don't do well and making peace with that. It is noticing your bad habits and figuring out how to overcome them. It is recognizing why you want what you want. These are ways to live into the answer. It is about noticing. It is about paying attention. It is about choosing which voices to listen to in your life and learning how to tune out the other ones. 

Basically, it takes attentive work. Eventually, though, it will shape a new way of thinking and, consequently, a new way of being. Every day we're healing something.

Live your way into the answer.

Happy Sunday.

I hope you find moments of true clarity and peace within this week.

[3] The Sunday Collections: Middle Space

It has been a centering kind of season, and sometimes centering isn't fun because it makes me pull in the bleeding edges and deal with issues I've been ignoring or justifying for too long. Not everything that is ultimately for the best feels good at the time, though. 

It seems as though I'm always, forever sitting in a middle space. I'm neither here nor there. Always going, never quite arriving. I'm at the point, now, in my middle space where the novelty has worn off a bit, the end is just foggy enough to be out of reach, and I'm feeling the rut beginning to form. I hate that rut. It is the routine, the repetitive work. What I've noticed about myself is that I usually dive into new things with intensity, and then the shine wears off and I'm looking for the next thing. This is a habit that scares me, a bit. I'm trying to train myself out of it. I don't want to spend my life addicted to running over the next hill while never actually leaving behind work of substance. 

We're all building something, I think. We're building careers, families, relationships, our stories. My question to myself is: what grounds me enough to push through that boring, dusty middle space? Personally, I've discovered that I need to be creating things. Rather than always chasing the newness out there, I can create new things here and now to keep the restlessness at bay. When I'm craving a change of scenery and it is not the right place or time to leave, I need to look at where I stand from a different angle. 

The other thing is comparison. It is easy to glance over into the lives of other people and convince myself that they have better problems, more freedom, or a nicer life in general, and maybe, if I tried something new, I'd get there too. See, that type of thinking is dangerous, especially if it propels me to drift around, taking on projects and signing up for things that don't fit who I am because I'm trying to find the magic life. It is especially dangerous if it makes me a chronic "leaver," ever unfinished and never truly satisfied. I know I'll never build anything strong if I keep disappearing before the end.

Part of why I have this urge to leave before the end is because I hate endings. Denouements are painful and final and sometimes I'd rather skip across to new beginnings without the nasty "end" part. There's something healthy about allowing a season to finish, though. Some of us drag out our seasons on purpose so the end will never come. Some of us avoid endings by trying to evade them. Either way, closure sometimes hurts and it is important to acknowledge that. It is good to say good-bye at the right time. Sometimes it might not be our choice to say good-bye, but it is essential to learn how to work through this, even if it might be very painful.

It is Sunday. In a way, this is a day of beginnings and endings. It starts a week and signals the end of last week. It is a day that I use to reflect and it is a day I use to look forward. I think that this practice subtly helps ground me, as well. It shows me that last week had purpose and beauty and lessons, and so will this week. It is the sigh of relief and a spark of possibility wrapped into one day. 

This is the ebb and flow of life's rhythm. 

[2] The Sunday Collections: Be Gentle With Your Self

This week was one of those crazy ones. The days were full and time was short. It's funny. The week I try to be intentional about simplicity is the week that gets crammed with one more thing to do, one more place to be, etc. None of these things were bad, but sometimes there is just so much. 

Keeping track of the little things is becoming more important to me now. The snapshots of my week include a quiet morning breakfast, one of my finished pottery projects with the tiniest crack in the bottom (a lovely imperfection, to me), scarves and blankets, early mornings, good books, and writing letters on paper. 

Simplicity. Breathing space. Intentionality. Noticing. Appreciating. It starts with the small things and eventually it becomes a way of seeing and a way of being. 

I tend to get restless easily. I feel like I'm always chasing down a new goal or trying to move in a new direction. I can get addicted to "the next thing" without fully appreciating what I've already accomplished or what already belongs to me. Ambition is good, but I don't want to become a person who is chronically unsatisfied. My way of combatting this, for now, is by documenting the simple moments of my week. I don't want to take anything for granted.

Also, this phrase: be gentle with your self

I'm trying to stay true to my own story and I'm trying to give myself more grace for the times I make mistakes or fail. I'm not lowering standards. I'm trying to stop beating myself up when I feel as though I fall short, or when I feel as though everyone else is better, further, stronger, or has their life more "together" than I do. 

Part of this includes talking more to the people who are my cheerleaders in life. They are the ones who encourage me to be genuine and challenge me in healthy, needed ways. They are affirming and gently nudge me back on track when I fall off a little bit. They tell me the truth. I want to listen to them more.

Part of this includes regularly taking time to do something that fills me. These are things that refresh me, inspire me, and energize me. Personally, this can take many different forms. My pottery class, carving out quiet space to read or write, wandering through Indigo to browse through the books, thrift shopping, talking to a good friend; these things all create "sweet spots" in my day or my week. 

This week, I hope that you find space to do something filling. Look for those sweet spots and savour them. 

Try to slow down and appreciate the simple moments.

Be gentle with your self. 

Have a restful Sunday.

[1] The Sunday Collections

I've developed a funny little habit that I do on Sundays. I have a huge collection of pictures on my phone because I'm always taking pictures during the week of things that catch my eye and inspire me. Sometimes it is the mood or colour scheme of the picture that captures my attention, and, sometimes, it is a memory behind it. Either way, every Sunday I listen to an artsy playlist of songs and go through all of these pictures. 

In order to organize these pictures, I've decided to sometimes put them up here as well, mostly so I have a place to put them all. This is obviously not to showcase great photography, since most of these images are just quickly taken with my phone. This is more just a collage of snatches of my week. 

Also: one thing I have been thinking about this week is this word "reclaim." Sometimes, especially during this time of year, I feel kind of weighed down and restless waiting for spring to come. As a result, I tend to get sloppy in my own life. I cut corners and take shortcuts and get stuck in old ruts. I've been trying to reclaim spaces of my life by being alert and trying to see new things. 

One way I do that is by taking these pictures. There's something about noticing and capturing beauty that, to me, is an act of acknowledging these kind of exceptional moments that I could easily skip over. Sometimes they are extremely mundane things, but they can still be beautiful.

Another way: a friend and I agreed to take the month of March to read through the book of Hebrews in the Bible. Sometimes creating a fresh goal, naming it, and doing it with a friend is helpful to break out of that rut.

Lastly, I'm trying to commit to incorporating and increasing simplicity into my life. In my schedule, in what I wear, in my daily expectations of myself, etc., I just want to purge all the excess out of my life and be content with simplicity so I can more easily see and commit to things that matter. 

I'm hoping that, by being intentional with my time, my resources, my choices, and my relationships, I'll be able to reclaim those parts of my life that were starting to become cloudy. 

That's just a little meditation for your Sunday. 

I hope you find simple moments of beauty within your week as well.