Values, And How They Change
There’s a shift happening, and I didn’t
know it was coming until the ground beneath my ever-moving feet was already changing
up into a pause.
Since leaving India I’ve been working from my
parents’ house, because I don’t have anywhere to be until July. Mum and Dad didn’t so much ask me to hang around for a
minute as categorically tie me to my mother’s She Shed and say, Laura, we missed you, and we want to look
after you as you keep writing this book, so shut up and let us.
That means, of course, that they believe in me.
And that they love me. I find it tremendously difficult to let myself be loved,
and to be helped, but that isn’t the point of this post. Or maybe it is. Maybe
all I’m trying to say is that it feels like some healing is going on, but I don't have the words for that yet.
I have one word, though. No. Two. In India, devotion appeared over and over and over again. As did surrender.
The man with the incredible mind, the one who took my heart (and my breath), he said something
to me that plays in my imagination before I go to sleep. He was the culmination of surrender and devotion. My words aren't a problem for him.
When I was
considering leaving my yoga course he said, You
know what separates us from the animals? From the lions and bears and
elephants? Surrender. Animals will never surrender to their prey, to their
destiny, but we can.
He continued, And in surrender we learn how to truly conduct ourselves with
devotion, total devotion, because there is nothing to lose once you’ve given in
to the current of your life.
That rattled me. Woke me up - so much so that that's the moment we kissed for the first time. But like this post isn't about needing to learn to accept kindness, this post isn't about boys, about falling, either.
I complained to Dad over lunch last week
that since staying with them, I’ve been operating at about 40%. Not working
hard enough. He looked me dead straight and said, Laura, if this is 40% you need to look at your definition of 100%. Meaning:
relax. You’re doing fine.
I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath
for somebody else to say, A+ for life,
kid. You got this.
You know when you see a toddler in a buggy
kicking and writhing and Mama keeps pushing the buggy anyway, whether the kid
wants in or not? I’m that kid. Demanding to be seen, to be heard, to talk about
how remarkable she is, totally unaware that the universe is going to do what she does anyway. That if I simply surrendered to her magic, I'd come to find more of it. That I don't have to push quite as hard as I'd believed in order to feel like it's (I am) enough. I only have to do like my tattoo says and just show up. To my book. To my life.
I like this slower pace. I like being
easier on myself. I like that the best part of my day is when I eat the breakfast porridge mama has made me or drink pints with my dad. That by going slower and easier I am, indeed, seeing more magic in the everyday. I like how my diary is blank and my days are full. Full of feelings and not things. A lot of this has to do with who I want to be, I know that much. I've returned only to find what I've been looking for, and knew it all along. I had to travel the whole world to come home to myself.
I
suppose what I am writing myself into is the realisation that I thought a “Big Interesting Life” was about making grand, complicated plans, about being a vision board-shaped somebody, maybe an ~internet personality~, too, and that more money, more bylines, more followers and more "crazy tales" is what would make me feel like I was going balls to the wall on my own life. Like I've always said.
I'm understanding, now.
A
big, interesting life is a life full of love. I want to write about that. Live that. I want to quietly sit at my
computer and type my words and get on with the business of loving. And, it
seems, get in some practice at being loved, too.
Everything else is background noise.
Everything else is a distraction.
I think I'm starting to see that my job here isn't to become anything, but to un-become everything I thought I should be.
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