New Chapter
“Mommy, am I going to school tomorrow?” Henri asked.
“Yes, you are.” I answered her as calmly as I could without showing my own anxiety about the change. “You are starting a new chapter.”
“What is a new chapter?” She asked.
“A new chapter is when you are at a new phase in life and you are going to fill those blank pages with new stories.” I don’t think she understood me.
Venise just started school. Senior year! Just one more year to go with high school.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. My friends said the same thing. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
I could tell she was worried, something I’m quite familiar with. “You guys are about to close one door and open a new one. You don’t get to see what’s behind the new door, so it’s normal to be worried. But don’t focus on the new door so much, pay attention to your now, experience this year fully. When you open the new door, you’ll realize it’s not that scary. It might take you few days to get used to being in college, it might take you few weeks to find the rhythm, and in months the uncertainty will become nothing.”
“It’s all about getting used to.” I tell myself that often, like a mantra.
Change is scary. I turn 48 this year and change doesn’t get easier. Certainty brings safety, it’s what we called the comfort zone. Funny though, I don’t like staying in the comfort zone for too long because that means I am not growing.
In between comfort and growth there is struggle - the part, I think, where we are actually afraid of. Struggle can be anything - heartache, loss, grief, anger, disappointment… And struggle can be any length of time. When we cannot predict what type of struggle it is going to be and for how long, it is normal to want to stay in the comfort zone.
I’ve experienced many life changing moments, none were easy. Every time I struggled I would imagine myself as a caterpillar, confined in a small space and trying to grow a pair of wings. The process sounds painful and so alone. The experience is yours. No one can do it for you. Even if you have a Sam to carry you, you, Frodo, still have to fulfill the task. But when you finally overcome a difficult challenge, you’ll find yourself free, flying in a much bigger space, at peace, and a little wiser.
To my daughters, myself, and anyone that is starting a new chapter in life:
It is going to be ok. Things will turn out fine. Even when nothing is planned, your next step will always show up.
There will be challenges - something will knock you down, someone might make you cry. There will be days when nothing is going right and no matter how hard you try you just can’t seem to fix it. You’ll feel defeat, barely crawling up to continue another day. When you feel like giving up, look for courage inside of you. Even if it’s a tiny spark, you have it in you. Just need to make another step, crawl forward for another inch. That action, that willingness, is what shifts the outcome of your story, it takes you closer to someone who will lend you a hand or something that solves the problem. Trust that you can handle those challenges. And when you are certain that you cannot handle them - ask for help. It is ok to not be ready to rise for a challenge.
“I’m not ready, give me more time,” you say.
“Sure, I’ll come back another day,” Challenge replies.
There will be days when things are going well, you feel so much joy and at peace. Remember to go deep into that. Don’t doubt and worry that the good things will end. Yes, truth is good things end. When a ride is calming and relaxing, you can probably enjoy it for few minutes, 10 minutes most, but for hours? The ups and downs are part of the cycle of life, it’s what makes it thrilling and worth continuing the journey. So on those good days, live it and participate.
In this new chapter of mine, I want to focus more on the present moment, give my self more attention, expand my idea of being an artist, and to live not in fear, but in hope.
I recently read a wonderful essay written by Y-Combinator founder Paul Graham, How to Do What You Love. In it, he talked about “prestige.”
“What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world.”
“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.”
“Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.”
The idea hooked on me for so long, to be prestige. Because it gives an illusion that it leads to income, higher income. I was too busy planning what’s next that I was never in the present moment. Fear was leading my life. It was exhausting, stressful and unhealthy.
I want to create work that comes within me. The real me, not the one that want to please or need validation, but the one that is quiet and curious. I want to stretch my limit and reach as far as I can.
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
How about you? What do you want to focus on in your new chapter?
