The Rain is Gone

The past couple of days have been making my head spin. I contemplated letting it all settle down/sink-in before writing about it, but I feel like I have to get it down while it’s still fresh in my mind and not watered down by over-analysis and the passage of time.

Posted recently about being confused about what I needed to change. Felt like change was imminent but I didn’t know what direction it was coming from/didn’t know what I should be doing. Came to the conclusion that I was being impatient and not letting the process take its course. So I left it and let it sit for awhile.

Turns out it really is true that you can’t know something before its time because I discovered the thing that I had to change was ME. If someone told me that straight up at the time that I asked it, they would’ve gotten a WTF look in return. The answer seems so broad and all-encompassing, but it’s very clear to me now. And the interesting thing is that nothing has changed externally, but so much seems to be shifting inside.

The shift seems to have started with the usual blog surfing. Again, synchronicity found me at the Creative Everyday blog -- I followed a link from there to a blog called Crossroads Dispatches. (wow, I just now realized the significance of that naming!!) To me, reading that blog is like reading the writing of someone who’s traveled the same path that I’m traveling on but is thousands of miles ahead of me. It’s almost hiking your way along some wild unbeaten path that you thought you discovered, only to see a tell-tale yellow flag signaling that not only has someone come before you, but they’ve been kind enough to leave clues (or clews as she would call them) to help you find your way easier. I wonder now if she named her blog Crossroads Dispatches with this type of symbolism in mind?? Maybe someday I’ll work up the courage to ask.

One of the first posts I came upon that caught me went to an article that said:

“…people nowadays also set great store by being original, but you can’t really be original by taking thought. That sort of originality is a false, is an artificial, originality. It’s not the real thing. You can only be original, you can only produce something original if you are original. That doesn’t mean being eccentric, it means in a way being yourself, it means being in touch with yourself, knowing who and what you are; having or developing insights, vision, having imagination. If you can be yourself in that way well you will be creative in the sense of producing something original, something which partakes of the nature of creativity.”

That quote is so in line with so much of my recent thinking/feeling -- stuff I hadn’t even yet journaled/blogged about because I was still formulating my thoughts in my mind. On top of that I would add that people seem the most unhappy, the further they are from their original selves, the further they are from their "original centers."

A lot of the other posts as I read them were all about letting go of yourself/your expectations and the accompanying worries and disappointments that stem from them. The reason I italicized “as I read them” is because I strongly believe it may not have been the original message she intended, but it is what I got from the post because it is what I needed to get from it.

She’s talking a lot recently about inspiration and about how it CANNOT be forced. She’s totally right. You have to make yourself open to it in whatever way you make yourself open to it. I think it’s different for everyone. That’s probably where a lot of people struggle – they look to others, their parents/friends/mentors/the experts to give them the answers, but only YOU can answer the questions for yourself. It’s certainly where I struggle. But the fact is, only YOU know what the questions are that need to be answered. To look to someone outside of yourself to help you define who you are is like going on one of those crash/fad diets – it may work for a while, but sooner or later you’ll be back where you started.

It’s only through doing the difficult footwork of getting to know and define and FIND for yourself that you get back to where you’re supposed to be – how you find your way back to your “original center.”

The second part of it all is to not just be open to inspiration, but be willing to follow it, and as much as it is within your power, to do so without hesitation, expectations or reservations.

Today, I was sitting at work when an Outlook pop-up appeared reminding me that I had a Toastmaster’s meeting today. I debated whether or not to go, but in the spirit of the go with the flow/follow your whimsy/muse messaging that I seemed to be receiving, I decided what the heck, I’m going. I got to the meeting location only to discover I had arrived 30 mins early. This was during lunch hour, so I didn’t want to waste the time just waiting around. Then I looked across the street and remembered I had been wanting to check out the Redwood City public library for awhile. I walked in and my jaw just literally dropped. It was so much more than I expected. It had a total Borders/Barnes & Noble feel to it – not dark and musty like the public library I remembered from my youth. Instead it was the kind of place you want to sit around, lounge and really just take your time browsing in. I have been putting off doing my artist’s dates because I couldn’t figure out where to go for just an hour that would inspire and recharge me, but it looks like I’ve found my place.

I checked out a couple of books for my son and then headed back to Toastmasters and lo-and-behold, what is the topic for the day? BEAUTY. Beauty in all it’s forms and all the various ways we come across it in our lives. [I’m almost tripping over my jaw at this point.] One of the main speeches given was actually about how the speaker had spent one afternoon following HER whimsy/going-with-the-flow, on a day that could otherwise have been perceived as one disaster following another, and how that had resulted in a very pleasant, memorable day for her.

If you think about it, what did I actually do in this 90 minute time period? I went to the library and attended a Toastmasters meeting. But because of the state of mind that I was in, I got so much more out of it than just a trip to the library and a meeting. For me, that 90 minutes was about reaffirmation of the messaging/synchronicity of late. It was about finding beauty in the simple things, not by forcing myself to find that beauty, but by being totally caught off guard by the beauty of a simple thing and letting myself get swept away by it.

I don’t really understand it all myself. But I don’t think I’m supposed to. In a sense, I think analyzing it too much would take away from the experience and may even be akin to “looking a gift horse in the mouth.” I just want to say thank you, God/the universe/the infinite for a day of simple beauty and the mindset to appreciate it.