Two Paths - Distraction or Obstacle
This shit scares me. I’m afraid to write in public. I’m afraid to share what I see, partly because what I see goes in stark contrast to the prevailing winds, and partly because I’m afraid to reveal to the world my inner-most truths.
But I write anyway because I see that there are only two paths for me in life:
- The path of the next distraction, or
- The path of the next obstacle.
When I sit down to write and all I’m faced with is a blank screen my whole body and being is filled with terror.
- I’ll be rejected.
- Who wants to know what I have to say anyway!
- I’m a shitty writer.
- Who am I to have a viewpoint?
- I’m not creative.
- Others are better than me.
And on and on. The next thing I know I’ve distracted myself into watching tutorials on how to organise my personal knowledge management systems. Or trying to get a notetaking app to do the thing I want it to do. Or downloading 27 to-do list apps. Or I create some drama about how so-and-so isn’t living up to their full potential and how I know what they need to do - they need to live authentically and birth into existence their great work.
When I find myself fixated on details or distracting myself with meaningless tasks, or dwelling on other people’s business, you can bet your bottom dollar I am avoiding an obstacle. If I reflect back to the very moment before I started wandering down the hallways of the “familiar-but-directionless” I will invariably find there was a feeling-sense arising in me that was too terrifying to look at.
I will make up all kinds of rationalisations about how I need to get my setup just right before I can do the thing. About why I need to do this other thing first. Getting my nickers in a twist about how the education system stifled my creativity or how my mum never hugged me.
Distractions!
The fact is I’m a writer. I might not be very good yet. But I have to write or I know I will die of having lived an unfulfilled, bitter, dissatisfied, angry life of shrunken existence and shrivelled soul.
I have to write whether my mind wants to or not.
We have to get to the point where the pain of living as an ingrowing toenail becomes so repulsive we have nowhere left to turn except into our resistance - into our lives.
And what is on the other side of that resistance.
- Truth.
- Relief.
- Authenticity
- Fulfilment.
- Clarity.
We think we need clarity in order to take the first step. But the truth is we take each step blindly and clarity is only revealed in our wake.
And with each step we gain more confidence that stepping into the unknown is all there is and the only thing worth doing. Not-knowing is the gateway to living in truth and clarity. Resistance is your compass, pointing you into the unknown and your destiny.
We think we have to figure something out before we can be ourselves. We think we have to heal ourselves before we can give our gifts.
This is the life I’ve lived for my whole life - too afraid to be who I am in case somebody doesn’t like it.
Well fuck that.
What you have in your heart and mind is gold. And somebody wants - no, needs - to hear it. And if you don’t share it with the world it will live like a stone in your shoe, irritating you endlessly.
Get it out and move on.