What is ‘it’ tangling your thoughts? Is it a text you're waiting for? The proof of your hard work? The validation of someone who has, for years, pushed you aside?
Whatever your it. Be easy about it.
My phone seems to relentlessly beckon me from across the room. It sits dormant, completely still and without a sound, a ding, a pleasing little vibration that it has hyper-attuned me to hear. But lately, even as I wait for a message that may or may never come, my heart has softened around it. There is no longer the deathly grip and daunting tick of every moment noticed without the words I’m waiting for. In fact, now, the phone can sit. It can wait for my company rather than the other way around. It can be the petulant child in time-out that does all it can to steal my attention and test my resolve, yet I can sit calmly knowing that when the time is right and we’re both very clear on who is in charge, the phone will be fine there, left alone. In fact, it needs to be so. So that I can be easy where I am, in the real world and away from the encompassing non-reality that awaits in my phone. So that I can Present. Peaceful.
Such is the same on a Tuesday of any week when ideas are demanded of how to phrase a new product. How to wrap language around seemingly superficial - but, in actuality, deeply meaningful articles that adorn our precious bodies. The pressure from people whose roles are so different from mine: they are tasked with the impossible mission of manipulating time, or predicting the decisions of large groups, or seeing a year into the future and what society will deem important, appropriate, ‘cool’. But my task is, as a creative, to answer to the muses. Not time. Not people. And sometimes that means waiting for their siren song, and then sitting till I'm sure it is the right song for the moment. So I can’t have my proverbial ears closed. I can’t pound letters out with fists. I must be easy about it. I must let it come to me. When the criticism and pressure comes to do bend to human rules, I must be easy about that, too. I cannot take it personally. I must let it pass through me without it sticking.
And when the softness of the night finally falls on LA… When the windows are open and the air moves easily from one side of my room to the other. But in my head toss and turn the thoughts, the fears, and the worries I have amassed throughout the day, week, year, lifetime. And I cannot sleep. For all I do - the mask over my eyes, the fan whirling above; when none of it works, I must let go. I must release my need for control of sleep. I must ease my body and mind and let it happen naturally, even if not at all. And allow tomorrow to be tired if it must. Because it can only happen within the ease.
So for whatever you long for; the dream that alludes you, the want that inspires you, the hunger that propels you, the kiss that tempts you. However loud it growls in your psyche. Be easy. Know that fervency can exist, it doesn’t need to be calmed. The fire does not need to be tamed, it can rage as long and as wildly as it may like. Do not force. Do not control. Allow it. And watch the strengths of the forces around you step up to meet you where you are, and provide. Because you are not the only and sole responsible entity in any endeavor. You are not the only one physically, energetically, or spiritually at work here. Allow the work to be shared.
It’s easier than you think.
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