I’m running on two hours sleep, so I doubt that what follows will be any kind of novel. But as I was doing my morning pages at about five o’clock today, I noticed myself writing something that I wanted to share. It went something like this:
You want to know the truth – at least you say you do. You say you want to know the truth because once you know the truth, you will be able to “live” risk-free. You fear that if you were to truly “live” now, with an incomplete picture of the truth, that you will come to harm. That you are in danger of causing irreparable damage, either to yourself or to the ones you love. So you want to wait.
Seek the truth. Please. Go after it with every scrap of curiosity you can muster. But listen carefully: there will never be a moment where you have finished finding the truth. In fact, the more earnestly you seek it, the more you will find you still have to learn. There will be always be further to go, deeper to delve, more layers to discover.
And since you will never finish finding the truth, you cannot afford to put off “living” until you are done, because that moment will never come. No, the truth will come precisely from living. Now. If what you want to do feels important, then be honest with yourself. Do it now, and throw yourself into it body and soul, or don’t do it now. But don’t claim you are going to do it, only later. There is no later.
Look out into the world at what attracts you – whether you understand why or not. What is it that you are moved to inspect more closely? Do it. Inspect it. Engage with it. Go down the rabbit-hole. Be brave enough to follow the breadcrumbs.
Trust reality to keep you safe on your voyage into the curiosity of you soul. Trust is truth.
It was longer than I thought it would be. Sorry about that. Anyway…
Thank you for the emails you’ve been sending me. They have kept me writing – this is my 131st piece pusblished since the 5th of October, and I have no plans to stop.
I write an awful lot about what is and what isn’t under our control. And as with anything I write about, that’s because it has been the single most epic struggle of my life. Perhaps this is what I enjoy so much about having a daily writing practice – instead of allowing all the things I can’t control in my life (99.99999%) to get me down, I have devoted time each day to something well and truly under my control.
I am earning my keep on the planet, one day at a time. Thank you for being a part of that.