Notes from the Middle
“Ever present,
never twice the same,
ever changing,
never less than whole.”
RWI
Old stone walls.
Beige-grays and pale-pinks.
Sunrise and...
the sense of a beginning.
It’s morning and within my hands is another day. I take it slowly and sit quietly with the questions that keep my soul limber.
Why am I here?
Why am I trying this?
Why now?
Maybe it’s just to touch the edges of my life again... to wake up and remember that change is still possible... to live a little closer to what feels true.
While I’m here, I want to see what’s really mine and invite some individuality out of hiding. I want to treat this small patch of time as a testing ground - a space to recover integrity and bring my unmasked self back into view.
Where should I begin?
Where I am.
I’ve lost sight of the man I was becoming - the ideal I hoped to grow into. My enthusiasms feel scattered, my ambitions unfocused, and my dreams half-remembered. The road that once looked straight now bends into shadow, and I’m trying to find my way again.
That is where I will devote my energy.
It’s tempting to imagine that my life plan will present itself neatly: a lucid itinerary, a list of steps, a well-designed architecture of choices...
But I know it doesn’t work that way. Existence comes to me without instructions, and direction is something I myself have to sense and feel. There’s no map to fold open and follow - just the mystery, awkward and honest.
Very well then.
I’ve been here before - confused, hopeful, impatient - and somehow I always end up walking again. Uncertainty isn’t an enemy to me - I know how to soften towards it.
The key is to release pressure - not add more.
When my searching takes on a desperate texture, when I tell myself, “I need to figure this out... I need to produce an insight... I need to come to a conclusion” - the air around me tightens, and my mind goes blank.
But if I welcome the labyrinth, if I step into it with faith and without urgency, if I say, “relax... settle in... this is work worth doing... take your time... savor it” - an entirely different atmosphere emerges. My chest loosens, the space around me widens, and a small, steady brightness forms behind my eyes.
Stay relaxed but precise.
Stay aware but untroubled.
Believe you will get there,
and in the meantime...
enjoy where you are.
Ironically or comically, I couldn't get The Devil's Snare from Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets out of my head, a clear metaphor for panic, control, and surrender. Oh, these human reflexes! Exasperating. Oh, the clarity that *could* come when we stop thrashing in the pit.
Wow! That was just wonderful- to be reminded that this an all part of being alive and human... To relax into it but to still do the work of following both curiosity and rest and then to release and clear. That we are exactly where we are supposed to be.