I Meant to Write Something More Important Than This

It is a regular October morning, and I am staring at the sky. Lately, my sleep has been even worse than usual, so I’m feeling heavy and barely present. With my mug of peppermint tea, I step outside to face the east – where the sun would be if not for the grey cloud layer – hoping that some light filters through and wakes me up.

Usually my workplace is serene. A garden lies a few yards in front of me and cedar trees tower overhead. Today, however, the stillness I can typically count on is disrupted by the loud buzzing of construction next door and the idling engine of a large delivery truck. Birds chirping nearby are only faintly noticeable. This moment is less than my tranquil ideal, and yet I am strangely struck by the urge to write. Well, urge isn’t the right term for what happens when creativity starts flowing; it’s more that words come to me.

But I meant to write something more important than this.

The impulse to “do it right the first time” has long been an obstacle for me. Even now, my mind is freezing. There is a fear of failure, incompetence, and embarrassment that stands in the way of us offering our gifts to others. What if I try, and I find that I was silly to think that I could offer anything valuable? I want to care about you enough to risk embarrassment, enough to risk the possibility of my efforts being worthless. Trying is hard.

Lately, I’ve been encouraging myself to do it wrong the first time, to do it any which way so long as I do it a first time at all. And yet: blockage. So, I was surprised when creative energy struck this morning in a moment when what I had to offer felt nowhere close to what I have thought could be valuable. Perhaps it was an invitation to courage, an invitation to my actual creative rhythms (as opposed to when and how I believe I should be creative), an invitation to offering out of mystery and vulnerability.

In my vision, I write this first piece from a place of confidence and clarity – a strong note to start on. But here I am, smack dab in the middle of uncertainty. It’s only natural.

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels a pressure to offer from a place of hindsight, experience, and certainty. Life, however, is something we can only speak to from inside of it. There is no bird’s-eye-view – at least not one we can remain in. We can see from this vantage point in glimpses: flashes of spiritual connection that come and go, leaving us wondering, still, how to navigate our zoomed-in daily lives.

We aren’t given answers or a road map. To follow another’s map is to become disoriented to one’s own path, one’s own life. All we can offer each other is the story of what we have encountered; what we experience, need, and discover on our own journeys through this shared landscape; and loving care for one another as we traverse this great mystery called Life. That is what I hope to give.

I hope here to offer authentic reflections and creations that emerge out of my path as an example of the possibilities available for navigating your own. Some part of me wants to rescue you from hardship and unknowing; yet I know that, even if I could, you would still be the only person who can learn and live and love your life. No one else is up to the task.

My hope, then, is to play some small part in your journey deeper into your own life; to support your becoming – in your own way, on your own terms. We walk our own paths, yet we are connected to and supported by all of life. Maybe I can remind you of that sometimes, somehow. Maybe, as I follow my own journey into mystery, some steps forward and deeper can appear for you as well. Not perfect steps, not The Only Steps You Must And Are Meant To Take, but today’s steps. Perhaps tomorrow’s, too – but not yet.

May our movements be beautiful, even if only in hindsight. Amid uncertainty, pain, longing, and fear, may we at least move at all. I have a hunch that the beauty will come. Let’s find out.