UNTIL I SETTLE
In the mornings I indulge, letting my mind flit freely from social media to news to a book. Sometimes looking. Mostly just until I settle. This is the case this morning. A false start into a post about the formats and organization of how I may organize my writing and blog site. Thinking I'd plug in the keyboard to the computer and record something, more coffee, a book, back to Twitter and then the title appears to me. "Until I settle."
I used to force myself in directions constantly. I still do when the need arises, but I've come to understand and allow that we must let things come at their own speed. That most times, if we press into the silence and quiet of the morning, it will eventually press back, slow, eventual, calm. When you arrive there you breathe in, and then start.
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Sometimes this is all it takes to spur me forward. "Just start and the rest will come." I think. It hasn't yet. Now is when I must press into another thing. Patience. A quick dictionary check and I love this definition. I was sitting here wondering "what" patience is. Is it a feeing, an action, a state of mind?
Google says it's the "the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset." This definition floods me. A tingling in my chest spreads out. It's exciting in that it describes it exactly but it doesn't address the applying of it. The "practice of patience" so to speak. The line below, a synonym, which I love no less than the definition. Forbearance.
Who gets excited about a definition?
Me. I get excited.
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Recently I met a friend from high school for lunch. He, a writer in the ad industry for decades. He. No different than me. Searching. I love my time with him because it's like talking to myself. I look into a mirror of sorts, a thick beard, long hair, ubiquitous trucker hat (camo, like mine), eyes that squint right before he talks, soak in what I say, and many times agree. It's reassuring to know you aren't the only one who thinks this way. It's better to hold this court with a friend you knew for maybe junior and senior year in high school and somehow stayed in touch with for 30 plus years without trying. Pulled together again and again. Sometimes after 20 years or so, again 4 and 5 years later. After each meeting, energized, each time picking up again where we left off. Accepting.
Our talk the other day steered like they normally do. Catching up on the niceties of life, and then further, after the coffee has lost it's heat, we land on careers but really, we land on callings. At this point we move into a state of mental similarities, eyes say "yes, I get that totally." He actually says "totally" often. It's calming and again reassuring.
The question these two 50 year olds had this time was something along the lines of "Do the things we do still mean something?" Meaning do we still want to do the things we do, and or, why do or don't they motivate us anymore? Further. Can we force that motivation?
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One of the things he has landed on is that fear of failure no longer motivates him. This hit home big time, but I'd never thought of it. When we are younger we fear getting fired, having a failed business, relationships whatever. We wallow in it constantly, creating a constant tension; stored anxiety transformed to kinetic energy to do the things we do.
We constantly chase the next and the next and the next. This is me. New. Different. Over and over and over. The people that love me describe it as me losing interest, or that what I'm doing is never enough to satisfy me. This is at once patently true and false. The difference is that no one should take it personally, though it affects them so of course they do. In the end. I just love to start. I don't know that I will, or should, ever change that.
Starting has given me everything I have. This includes heartache and failure, but I always start again. It's the finishing I need to work on. And a lack of finishing causes both internal and external conflicts. I deal with that by starting again. And again. And again. I finish less and less.
Some would say that if I culled and reduced, I'd gain a privilege of focus. They aren't wrong. But what they forget is that the removing of things doesn't make more space for what remains. It creates room for more new, and I add on again.
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I am getting better. Age, I think, has helped build some of the pieces of the patience definition, a little of the "capacity to accept", if nothing more. Maybe when I'm 60 I'll be able to apply the word forbearance to my actions. Likely not.
Maybe what is happening is what I have started with. On a lot of days, the intensity (almost anger) at which I attacked things has waned. I need not align my life against another to rate its performance. Though I still sometimes feel like I should. Or want to.
Chuck Klosterman once wrote that, "you don't need a friend and you don't need a lover. What you need is a) one quality nemesis, and b) one archenemy. These are the two most important characters in the life of any successful human. We measure ourselves against our nemeses, and we long to destroy our archenemies. Nemeses and archenemies are the catalysts for everything." I am curious if he still thinks this way or if, like me, this stance has softened.
I think I used to have this "against all" mentality, but that energy has thankfully turned inward and settled into a kind of capacity to accept. Dare I say, a patience of sorts.
I still want it all and want to do it well. This remains, but without foes and a fear of failure. Defining why has come back to be reassessed and reset as it should.
I imagine if I wait until I settle. It will come. It always does.
#hugsandhi5s
