Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Riding the Wave

I made an impulse purchase today. It was a red, and fairly simple, bracelet with a little foot cut out of the center and the mantra “it’s all about the journey” engraved on the front. Now I don’t really make a lot of impulse purchases; I, in fact, think and think and think about purchases before I make them, and they usually get shut down before the third stage of thinking about them even rolls around. But today I bought the bracelet, even though I’ve wanted it since the summer, I bought it today.

Now as we all know, if you’ve been keeping up with my blog that is, that I am a very straight lines kind of person. I like to see everything, up close, from beginning to end and all the itty-bitty cracks in between. And the problem with soul searching and this year is that I can’t SEE that. I can’t just fast forward to the end and see the end result. And friends, that’s a difficult and incredibly frustrating thing for me. It’s difficult for me to embark on a journey and not have an itinerary. I LIKE itineraries. I LIKE to know exactly what is going to happen, and dang it soul searching just will not give into my itinerary-loving ideal.

And friends, that frustrates the heck out of me. I want to have a plan of exactly where I will end up after this journey, and frankly I don’t have one, and not having one drives me a little bit insane. I like to block everything out into the way that they will happen, and you would think that I would have learned that “blocking” things out never really ends up being the best thing, but it’s hard. It’s hard to not PLAN everything. It’s hard to not try to anticipate EVERYTHING…even when it comes to soul searching.

But the thing about soul searching is that it doesn’t come with a plan. And no matter how much I want my ducks to be in a row on this they’re going to be all over the freaking place. No matter how much I want to know the end result NOW and have a tangible strategy for my soul searching, I can’t. And it’s rough.

But honestly, all of this energy that I am expending on anticipating the “end” result (if there is one) could be spent on the journey itself. I need to stop fighting against the wave and ride with it. I need to realize that soul searching truly IS about the journey, and no matter how much I want this to be a straight line, point A to point B kind of situation, it’s not. And that’s why I bought the bracelet today instead of this past summer, because today...was the right day.

Here’s a quote that speaks to me and, well, my frustration haha:  

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

3 comments:

  1. That quote is a stress reliever about the questions now. Live your way into the answer, and in your words don't spend your energy worrying about the ducks that "all over the freaking place." (:

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  2. You should check out this blog post. Very interesting and applicable to this post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-foreman/meaning-of-life_b_874934.html

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  3. Definitely a good article to put on this blog. It's very inspiring...I mean, who doesn't want to turn into a pearl...it's just getting through all the sand that's the hard part haha. Thanks for suggesting it :)

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