There's No Plan

Wrote a long paragraph yesterday explaining how I still write everyday, but no words were coming into my head, then went on and on about not wanting to write as a chore.

I deleted it.

There’s no need to make sure people know I have kept my words on writing daily, there’s no need for other’s approval. I need to trust that by you reading these words, right now, means you care and it is a way of showing support. I am the least of myself when I seek for approval.

I started writing on this platform because I am training myself not to trust that inner critic, which mostly it’s my mom’s voice. What can be more vulnerable than doing something I know I am not perfect at and then to put it out for the public to see? I used the word “perfect” and not “good” because I could never do or start anything unless it is perfect. I was always waiting for perfect. Perfect is when my mom might finally say something nice. Truth is there is no such thing as perfect and my mom would never say something nice with what I do. (I’ll save for another time to share the backstory of my mom to explain that she is no way a bad person.)

There is really no plan here or for anything in my life at the moment. Is it possible to flow through life like this? I trust that tools will appear when the time is right. Tools can be a challenge, an advice, a paycheck, Instagram, or a movie - things that help propel me an inch forward in this modern life.

“In a life properly lived, you’re a river. You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it; you can’t figure out a banal game plan applicable to all situations; you just have to go with the “beingness” of life…” - Jim Harrison

I watched this TedTalk by poet David Whyte yesterday. The thumbnail of the video showed up for several days on YouTube. I didn’t click on it, wasn’t interested. I was busy diving into film analysis. But something called to me to click on the TedTalk video yesterday. The title got me curious - A lyrical bridge between past, present and future. Hm? I clicked on it and David Whyte started the talk by saying, “What is the conversational nature of reality? The conversational nature of reality is the fact that whatever you desire of the world -- whatever you desire of your partner in a marriage or a love relationship, whatever you desire of your children, whatever you desire of the people who work for you or with you, or your world -- will not happen exactly as you would like it to happen. But equally, whatever the world desires of us -- whatever our partner, our child, our colleague, our industry, our future demands of us, will also not happen. And what actually happens is this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you. And this frontier of actual meeting between what we call a self and what we call the world is the only place, actually, where things are real.”

I couldn’t stop watching. Normally, I’d save a video to Watch Later, but I ended up watching his whole talk; I was very touched to the end. Something without an expectation and it became a tool for me. Toward the end of his talk, Whyte said, “And the last illusion is, I can somehow plan enough and arrange things that I will be able to see the path to the end right from where I'm standing, right to the horizon. But when you think about it, the only environment in which that would be true would be a flat desert, empty of any other life. But even in a flat desert, the curvature of the earth would take the path away from you. So, no; you see the path, and then you don't and then you see it again. So this is "Santiago," the supposed arrival, which is a kind of return to the beginning all at the same time. We have this experience of the journey, which is in all of our great spiritual traditions, of pilgrimage. But just by actually standing in the ground of your life fully, not trying to abstract yourself into a strategic future that's actually just an escape from present heartbreak; the ability to stand in the ground of your life and to look at the horizon that is pulling you -- in that moment, you are the whole journey. You are the whole conversation.”

I sat and pondered on his words for awhile. How much planning I used to do and it was just being afraid of the present? Afraid to fail, mostly. But when had I ever fail so much that I don’t deserve to exist in this world? Never. To live fully, I must stay present. Be present to the gift that’s being handed to me every second. This second, typing these words, it’s a gift. You, at this second, reading these words, are a gift.

I am grateful.

Here’s the video. Maybe it’ll be a tool for you too.