I want to be more honest than usual for a moment. The last few months being away from France has been excruciating for me. I have had to face fears in relation to my career, money, love and where I want my home to be. I am grateful for all these struggles, but it has not been easy. I have made a lot of decisions that I feel like I’m not completely ready for, and it has taken its toll on me physically. It’s made me realise that life is not a fairy tale – but I kind of already knew that. What’s more surprising is that I’ve found out that I don’t want life to be a fairy tale. I want to grow, I want to learn, and sometimes that means going through discomfort. Life is about change after all, the question is: how do you want that change to go? Above all I learned that for me, it means I need to take responsibility for everything in my life and sometimes the act of taking responsibility can feel like the least natural thing in the world. Recognising the human faults in both yourself and others can leave you in despair and indifferent about life, wondering if it’s all worth it, unless you take responsibility for your life. But what exactly is taking responsibility? What does that mean? Surely we are not responsible for the things that happen to us without any warning at all.
The clue is in the word: responsibility. Response-ability. It’s not about finding fault, but about deciding how you’d like to respond, or even how you’re able to respond to things. When we use the word able, we’re talking about skill. Skill is something you practice, you apply and you get better at based on what you’ve learned from the past. If there’s anything I’ve learned from these last few months, it’s that: it is about time that I put into practice all the things that I have known for so long. The bridge between intellectually knowing something and emotionally knowing something on a deeper level, is practice. It’s developing your skills in practicing taking what is in your mind and using it as a soft support for your heart’s desires, instead of a hammer. So often, I had been taught that the best way to be good is to force. To be disciplined, which is a word that has developed a harsh reputation. To punish, to use the stick instead of the carrot. Most of us have become so used to punishment, that it feels normal. It was certainly the case for me. After so long, I’ve realised that this is simply not the most effective way to do things. Punishing yourself, depriving yourself and pushing yourself beyond your own limits are ways that will get you where you want to be, it’s true, but by the time you get there you will be broken. You won’t be able to enjoy what it is that you worked so hard to achieve.
I worked hard for three years to get this visa to France. In those three years, I was learning how to take responsibility for myself. For much of it, I pushed myself to face my fears. Perhaps that’s why it took so long. I took the difficult road. Now that it’s done, it seems that I needn’t have gone through so much struggle to get here. But it was a lesson I needed to learn, and a valuable one at that. I bought into the drama of my broken self confidence – believing that it was hard, that I wasn’t good enough, that I needed to have things perfect before I could go. The process was a big storm for me, one that originated in my mind and became a reality outside of me. That’s how life works. When we take responsibility, or we start to practice responding in a way that applies what we’ve learned in the past, only then can we have power over what’s outside of us. Until that moment, we’ll continue to be helpless. Each of us has our own way to get there, a path that is weaved between the exchanging glances of our heart and our mind. And I’ve learned in the last few years that it’s always important to honour yourself as the centre of your life – because the reality is that you are. No one can see through your eyes, no matter how much you want them to or they want to.
And it’s this kind of knowledge that I take with me, in addition to all the other items I’m packing into my suitcase these next few days. In truth, I’m not ready at all to make this move to France… but that’s the whole point. I don’t need to be ready to succeed to be satisfied or to be happy or at peace, I only need to be ready to practice. I can say that I’m definitely ready to try, to fail and to try again. That’s enough to look myself in the mirror in the morning and say: yes, I’m ready. Because that’s how ready any of us will ever be. There is no formula to life. People can give us their lists of what they want or don’t want, of what works or doesn’t work, but they can never make things happen for us although they may be a good motivation to take chances or be a good advisor along the way. We write our own formula only after having lived it, after having taken the steps to practice what it is that we have learned over the years. So, if you’re reading this and reflecting on your own life… consider to yourself: are you ready to try? Are you ready to grow? Are you ready to fail? If you are not, then hang back. But if you are, then take the next step. You will not be stepping into emptiness, because the version of you who knows better will be the one to catch you if you fall.
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