#1. Quiet Enough
September 8, 2023
“In the stillness of this place, I feel I am becoming quiet enough to hear the life I really want.”
I wrote these words two nights after our arrival in Italy, the final entry in a completed journal.
For most of August I had stared at a giant white board that was covered in questions asked to hopefully help me figure out my life. Or at least the next part of it.
Among them sat, “what do you want?” and “what kind of life do you want?”
A happy one? A safe one? One filled with beauty? I had no real answers.
I used to think that choosing to be happy meant resigning yourself to the life you’re in and trying to make it work by seeing the good bits. Now I wonder if maybe it works the other way around.
You find out what brings you joy and then you remake your life so you can choose it.
A couple days ago, I had a moment where I felt drained of life, completely wrung out by the last few years. There was an emptied outness in my eyes I didn’t like the look of. As I sat in a lounge chair on the patio, watching the sun sparkles in the trees as butterflies as large as hummingbirds fluttered around me I wiped tears from my face. Then I felt a voice inside speak.
What if you took the next year and just poured in beauty?
What if you didn’t worry about living up to societal expectations that never quite fit?
What if you didn’t worry about caretaking other people or inspiring them or being an example?
What if during that year you nourished your soul and body well?
What if you didn’t worry about healing or becoming or getting it right?
What if the full stillness you feel on these autumn winds was what you sought to embody?
What if you just lived your life in all the ways that feel beautiful to you?
What if you did that here?
Lauren and I are only four days and five nights into the month we’ve promised ourselves in Tuscany and I’m still what feels like a long way from knowing the answers to those questions.
Yesterday Kai asked me, “what do you feel you’re being invited towards?” To this I have answers.
First rest and stillness. And beauty. Everything else will reveal itself in time.