We don't get to know what is going to happen.
(
yes, even those of us with a magic eight ball that doesn't conjure up - reply hazy, try again - 99% of the time like mine does)
We don't get to have sure-things and job securities and relationships that are guaranteed to never ever evolve away from us.
(
and this sounds like it sucks - but only if you don't think it through to the end I promise)
There may have been a time in our planet's history that those things were available - that with a fixed attitude you could create a fixed outcome - but times have changed - we can't go home again and anchoring ourselves with an abundance of comfort and security on the straight and narrow path
actually throws the entire planetary system off-course.
(
yes, we are, each and every one of us that important!)
Because the irony is that there is nothing certain about certainty anyway
(
we need a new definition please Mr. Webster)
and the only guarantee that really comes with doing the thing that seems the most likely to produce that good
safe outcome
is that we get to go through life wondering how things
could have been if only we weren’t so fixed on the most sure thing, if only we weren't so determined to hold onto what used to work for us (
or even worse what used to work for someone else) -
if only we weren't so
scared.
(
cue the Jaws music here)
Now the opposite of fear is not courage in its modern definition. Since courage is something that can only evolve by facing fear (in a feel the fear and do it
anyway, kind of way) and that isn't how other opposing polarities work after all. You don't get cold by facing up to heat or get silence by being very loud.
(
although silence can speak very loudly so I may be on the wrong track with this part)
The root of the word courage is cor (
the Latin word for heart) though, so we can work with that one.
Courage originally meant to speak one's mind by speaking one's heart.
As makers we have to do this, we can't
not do it, it is who we are and why we are here and without an intrinsic "
wholeheartedness" to our work we may as well be living in another century because this one - the one our souls have chosen to fully participate in - will pass us by.
And if you are still thinking this is a bus you would rather leave the station without you I ask that we consider that the uncertainty of this exact period of time is a gift -
that without a big picture to guide us we can do ... well, anything actually!
I have been shaky with uncertainty so many times in the past few months -
(yes, spilling coffee and long held beliefs all over the livingroom, life is messy)
and shaky (
remember that DeNiro movie and Oliver Sacks book about the illness where people shook themselves to the point of rigidity) can lead to stillness (
a good thing) which leads to action (
another good thing) - and perhaps most importantly it evolves into a kind of
softening
(or rigidity, it is always up to us after all - but if we do not want to end up in a room with people in white coats throwing plastic balls at our heads - you may have to see the movie to know what the hell I am talking about here - softening is probably the way to go)
a less certain way of being in the world that is well ... pretty damn amazing at times.
Up Next - Navigating for Makers Part II - the gift of uncertain times
*have your cake print by
DB Artist
(In my quest to finish up any unfinished business - can unfinished business ever be finished?? - I had a past life telephone reading with an amazing intuitive a friend recommended - I don't want to bore everyone with the details but I do want to say that she said hubs had had many lives in the military and was a high up general and me ...
was I Cleopatra, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman?
well, no I wasn't.
But ... I was ... a whirling dervish
yes, you heard me folks, hubs was a general and I was a
whirling dervish - which explains why he calls everything a "mission", is very precise and organized, hates the cold and is obsessed with foot care - it also explains why I like to eat wild mushrooms, my propensity to spin myself into delirium and fondness for tall hats - she also said I have access to fairies from many lives as a midwife which explains the sparkly dust in my studio in the morning)
