Day 8 of Forty Days On Being A Seven and it’s about being in the present moment, even when you think getting “there” is where it’s at.
Or at least, that’s how I’m reading it.
It’s reminding me of Power of Now, and of bringing awareness and presence and appreciation of what’s happening.
It’s like… me practically living with Jarrod, though we’re not engaged or married. I’m not looking to the future and thinking “oh, when we’re married things will be perfect/change”. I’m thinking that marriage is happening right now. The relationship is being built right now. It’s an everyday thing.
Gideon writes, “As a Seven, my brain is always in the future imagining that the finish will feel more satisfying or more real.”
I don’t have that… Finishing lines have been… disappointingly insignificantly boring.
Getting my degree, finishing a book, passing an exam…
Beginnings are much more exciting.
It’s reminding me of a TikTok I saw on rituals. Whether weddings, birthdays, graduations, we use rituals to mark that a day is out of the ordinary, and we enter a different state, from where, once the ritual has ended, things are now changed. (We go into a wedding, and the everyday is suspended. When the vows are made, the couple is married. When the wedding ends, a new family is formed.)
Graduation didn’t feel like a celebration. Just a strange day where now you have to figure out the next steps. So was finishing a book, and passing an exam.
To me they mark anxious beginnings, of now finding a new path and future, and so I don’t look forward to them the way Gideon describes wanting to get to the finish line.
He also writes about missing the journey, which I think I’m not doing. I’m here doing the everyday with Jarrod. When I write I know it’s the process that I love, not the ending. And I don’t care so much about the closing in real estate — my team mates talk about the boost they get when they close, and I cannot relate — I like the process of meeting and talking to people.
I’m not waiting for a wedding to start a marriage, looking forward to getting a book or blog done (blogs will never be done), or chasing a cheque.
The journey is the life, not the ending.
It’s the messy mistakes and confused middles, the not knowing where we’re going and why, the making friends and losing lovers. Finding glimmers that make you smile and having tears wet clothes and sheets and other people’s skin.
And then, every once in a while, sitting in a space of peace because somehow, after all the movement, you realise you’re right where you need to be, and everything’s alright. You’re exactly who you need to be and you’re exactly where you need to be at.
It’s a meadow, a lake, a clearing in the forest.
And then we trudge on into the trees again, looking for the path by the light that slips past the canopy of trees. We think the trees block our way, but they’re actually there to shelter and shade. They make the oxygen, sometimes offer fruit, and when they’re lying across the road blocking our way, maybe they’re trying to say “hey, something terrible came by here recently. maybe try another way?” because trees don’t fall without reason.
I’m not saying life isn’t hard, because it can be challenging figuring out solutions to the problems we have. Trying to make a new plan when the old one was already confusing can feel like an atom bomb.
I’m just saying that there’s always something good, somewhere.
Is that my Seven showing?
🩷🌧️🌷
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