An old way to a new year

When animals are born, they learn a few primal movements: reaching, grasping, and allowing.

I’m familiar with the reach and the grasp; in fact, these come easy to me: Think of a goal, create the steps to achieve it, do the work, reap the rewards, repeat. But allowing… now that is a foreign concept to me.

As 2020 arrives, I make no goals. No resolutions. No concrete plans that feel constricting in my body. Rather, I let the expansiveness of ‘allowing’ come to me. I break the pattern of acting on every urge of internal restlessness -- every urge to be better (as if I’m not already whole), do more (as if I’m not doing enough) and achieve (as if I don’t already know that ordinariness is extraordinary). 

But we live in a culture that celebrates breadth over depth. Stimulation over quiet. Busyness over rest. Production over reflection. There is little room -- if any -- for allowing. Those rare moments that we do have space, we fill it -- with social media, apps, Netflix, work, planning. When we have time off, we get busy again -- with chores, tasks, to-do lists, and more planning. And when we are in a period of uncertainty, we fill the void by grasping and reaching for anything to make us just a little more certain. A little more secure. A little less unknown. A little more concrete.

Reaching and grasping may help us feel grounded, but only for a moment. The ground under our feet is always moving; it’s never constant. Concretizing fools us; we forget that everything is temporary, and the sooner we can join the feeling of groundlessness, the more we’ll realize that that’s the only state that we can be grounded in.

This grasping and reaching is like chasing our own tail as we convince ourselves that acting on our internal restlessness will give us relief, when in reality, we know in our hearts that it’s fleeting. Travel. Master’s degrees. Courses. Plans. Hobbies. The New Age obsession with manifesting goals and muscling our reality into what we think it should be has left very little room in life to… allow.

I’ve bullied my instinct of allowing into quiet submission; I’ve suppressed it and repressed it because it doesn’t fit into our culture. If I’m not being productive, have too much space, and have no clear goal or plan, I don’t fit into the mold that society has created for me; a mold that I’m waking up to and have no interest in filling. 

No one tells us it’s okay to not know. No one tells us that space is the birthplace of creativity and life itself. No one tells us to align ourselves with nature -- with what is -- rather than forcing outcomes as we reach. Grasp. Reach again. No one tells us that in the not knowing, there is an intensely alive presence.

In aligning ourselves with nature, we must understand that it’s winter for us in the northern hemisphere --  a natural time for introversion, rest, and hibernation. 
 

Winter, a season that’s become a time for extroversion, consumerism, and ‘busy-ness.’ 

Winter, with its dark, short days, is not honoured; our egos that tell us that we know best have reshaped it into something entirely different. We’ve told winter -- with all its stillness and shedding -- that it doesn’t have a time and place here. It doesn’t have a purpose. Darkness is not welcome, nor is rest. We must be always ‘on’ -- always in summer mode. Always up early, ready to crush the day. Always productive and making the most out of every moment. Always consuming, in some form or another.

Reaching. 

Grasping. 

Reaching. 

Grasping. 

I’m not sure yet what allowing feels like, but I have a pretty good imagination. And what I do know is that my life has no blueprint; I’m on a path that is not so much seeking, but being. Not so much striving, but resting. Not so much wanting something outside of myself, but loving who I already am. And rather than the reach and the grasp, I’m more interested in tuning inwards to see if I can get closer to my soul. Tuning inwards to hear her. 

And in this process of allowing, I have some questions:

What if not knowing; of being in the void -- was okay? What if it was encouraged?

What if the next time we had space in our lives, we didn’t fill it, but rather felt it?

What would life be like to follow our curiosity, moment by moment, rather than a plan that’s been laid out for us?

What would life be like if we became more connected to our internal and external seasons and cycles? If we could permission ourselves to be where we are, even if we don’t necessarily like it? If we could honour each phase of life, with all the craziness of the mind, emotions, and life events, and allow it to wash over us, purify us, and shed what we no longer need as we move into our newest expression? If we could see that things come together and then fall apart, over and over again?

This year, I’m letting the blueprint be created for me and by me, moment by moment, versus sticking to an imaginary plan of how I think my life should go. Because the truth is, none of us actually know what we need or what we want -- trial and error means we rarely know if we ‘got it right’ … what a trip.

So… let’s allow. 

Allow the crazy. The weird. The uncomfortable. The comfortable. The softness. Sweetness. Rest. Play. Laughter. Fun. Mundane. Simplicity. Hardship. Mystery. Surprise. Spontaneity. Balance. Pendulum swing. 

Allow it all. 

I’m with you every step of the way.