for now. for later. for moments when you’re navigating the through. with you.
—
here is your gentle place to be inside this day. a reminder that your disappointments (and my own) are not the end of the road.
this is entry #72 (approximately) in our current series, How to Be Still.
I’ve lived it a thousand times. Playing and replaying that dreaded conversation in my head, writing and then re-writing all sides of the script, in the hopes that things might turn out differently. Carrying around that lump of fear in my belly, so desperate to create a different outcome that I block my own path from beginning.
When a conversation feels particularly important and I’m particularly concerned about it going well because I very much so deeply want to achieve a particular outcome, it becomes a bit easier to settle for a false beginning. To settle for a non-existent invisible discussion that lives solely within the confines of my own head.
It’s always startling to wake up inside of a false beginning I’ve created, often without even realizing it. My awakening feels sudden, but in truth is usually quite gradual, and involves two key ingredients.
Disappointment, and connection.
When disappointment visits, it can be easy to turn towards self-punishment. To conclude that the fact that things aren’t working out in the way we’d hoped, is a sign that the end is nigh. That failure is upon us. That it is time to avoid facing the present moment, and instead, fill our days with endless reminiscing about what we
should have done.
should have known.
Disappointment isn’t easy to feel. Whether mild or profoundly weighty it is a sensation, an experience, that many of us have been taught to avoid.
But disappointment visits us all.
Sometimes disappointment is reflective of a need for distance. Sometimes disappointment is part of a call to make a different choice. Sometimes disappointment is a crucial component of our awakening - a recognition within that we can now see, a truth that was there, but which was lost upon us before. Sometimes disappointment is an ache. Sometimes disappointment is pain.
And sometimes disappointment is part of the dawning of the sun, echoes of growth that point towards freedom, discovery, and love.
When disappointment visits, that is not the moment we need to reach to punish our past.
When disappointment comes, it is frequently accompanied by a call to tend. Tend to our hearts. Tend to our discoveries. Tend to our connections.
To tend to the choices that we may not have seen were within
our grasp.
It is this calling to tend that helps us shift from false beginnings towards connection that is true. To gather lessons we’re learning and build something genuine, authentic to who we really are.
Right here. Right now. Right where we are.