As I look back at my posts for this year, my challenge updates are my least favorite. Valuable to me, I suppose, in terms of tracking progress in detail, but boring. I'm going to have to figure out a new way to note those details without asking you, dear reader, to wade through them with me.
Already I am turning to the end of the year, to looking back and seeing how my grand experiment worked out. I feel that, as if this were a magazine article, these posts should be clear, well thought out, and resolved somehow, but I don't feel that way at all. I feel as if I spent this last year on the trail of a treasure map, and while I found it (!!!) I'm now looking at it, trying to decipher it and figure out what to do next. So please forgive me if this post is an effort to gain clarity and direction.
What I can tell you for sure is that they were right, all those gurus, talking about exercise and meditation, eating right and getting enough sleep. That's no surprise, I mean, we all know it makes sense, right? And right was the little guru inside me. I was right to upend everything and follow my heart, my soul, my instincts; I was right to let go of how I thought I was supposed to do things and fall backwards, in spite of the risk.
What I couldn't have told you is WHY the gurus were right. Looking back, I thought that doing those things -- meditating, eating right -- would fit into the life I'd constructed for myself, the way I had of doing things. That they would make the merry-go-round I was on more enjoyable or more bearable. They would make it easier to do what I was already doing.
It doesn't work like that, though. It's only true to a degree. Remember my analogy of the rocks fitting into the jar, how I decided that my job and obligations would no longer be the big rocks, that meditation and taking care of myself would be? It turns out that the job I had didn't fit in the jar if it wasn't a big rock. It turns out I had to let go of that job and find one that fit.
Doing these things, the nuts and bolts of the challenge, didn't make my life work better as it was. I mean, they did, but there was more. Doing them made me see my life differently, live my life differently. And I am happier. If there's one sure way to measure the success of my challenge, that's it. Happiness is concrete and ethereal at the same time; difficult to define but easy to identify. I am no more secure in some ways than I was before -- money in the bank, income, etc (possibly even less) -- but I am secure in a deeper, more profound, more connected way. It's how you see your security that matters. Which makes sense, because security is all in our minds, anyway.
When I look back at the challenge list, for the most part I'm doing all of it, with little effort. They have become how I prefer to live my days. They are what I spend my time on, and my world hasn't imploded as a result. I am stronger, in every way, more healed, replenished. I am still healing, but I am miles from where I started. Meditating, sleeping, exercising, spending time outdoors, and nourishing my relationships are my big rocks, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I started a painting, and hope to finish it by the end of the year. I'm wondering what my purpose here is, that thing that will set my heart on fire, and shaping my challenge for next year. I feel as if my challenge is really only half done, in terms of the art of falling backwards. Finding my passion and purpose, and practicing them - doing them - is still on the table.
I am finding my place in the universe, and that makes me feel secure in ways that money never could. As I wind down this year, new doors are opening. If last January I went in search of a treasure map with little more to aid me than O Magazine, stories and images that popped up in my life, and my own sense of the world, then this coming year will be about following the path on the map.
And the map? It's the trail of clues the universe has given me. I'm not looking down at the map, concise, linear, clearly marked from here to there. Like Alice in Wonderland, I followed the rabbit down the hole and am living inside the map. It's a journey of discovery, and promise. I feel as if it's my mind that's struggling to catch up, make sense of things, have a plan so I can structure my days accordingly. Do I need to? I'm not sure. But I do know that all of these thoughts need a place to go. Because I'm basically figuring this out on my own, aided by the words of those who've gone before and marked the path, I need some kind of clarity around what I'm doing, and why.
That's what I'll be working on this next month, sorting out what all I've learned and where I'm going with it. Figuring out what my days will look like, shaping the next piece of my challenge. With gratitude, since Thanksgiving has reminded me how important gratitude, and grace, are in the world, and in my heart.
