This little idea has been occurring to me lately. It happens when I’m doing something I don’t usually do. Like go to a restaurant by myself. Or make a call I would usually be afraid of. Or choose to be satisfied with myself even as I know I’m about to be judged.
The idea that occurs to me is more like an image. I see, sense, feel a kind of carving out of a new passage. The old things I have done and done and done are well-worn, they require no effort. These new things though require effort. There’s the effort to settle my feelings about what I’m doing. Whether they are overwhelming excitement or fear or insecurity or just hesitation. These feelings are like little barbs I have to move through. I think I’m supposed to recognize that these feelings are there, but I also don’t have to let them rule me or scare me away.
There’s the effort to physically understand how to go about this new thing. Sometimes I just don’t even know how to speak about a new experience or phrase my words in ways that make sense within it. I’m stuck wondering what mouth movements are appropriate to form the correct words. Or how to modulate my voice. Or what do I do with my keys, my purse, my feet in this new space, place, situation, event.
So I’m carving these new experiences into my emotional world and my physical world, and probably my intellectual world as well. It’s so uncomfortable because it requires the effort I mentioned. Effort is uncomfortable, except it is less so for me now. Sometimes. Effort used to mean imperfection and failure, but somehow it now means I’m learning. Also, effort used to mean I should just hurry up and get it done. Now it seems to move me more towards slowing down and paying attention. Whatever I’m doing, whatever the task, whatever the moment, any level of effort is a reminder to pay attention.
It’s amazing really. As I’m writing this, I’m finding a wonderful collection of discoveries about how I seem to be positively engaging with this effort, smiling at it, with it, even. And I’m still amazed at how easy and yet difficult it can be to create these new passages, carving through the hesitation, inertia, and fear to create new openings in my life.
Maybe this is stuff learned from engaging in more than a year of improvisational dance, not dance to jam out and swing hips, but dance to create gestures and to see where things go. Dance that is these unfamiliar movements which were and are so freeing while also embodying movement that already exists within me. My comfort zone with experimentation is wider now. Experiments are fun or frustrating but always a learning experience, and I have found that learning experiences are rich and varied and available while I allow them to be just that. To be rich and varied and available and not just ways of showing how incomplete I am or lacking in knowledge.
In ashtanga yoga, the saying is, “All is becoming.” I’ll follow the becoming, allow the unknowable, ease or struggle through the discomfort. Learn.
I love that you’ve taken such a brave and hard step by posting this. The mind learns from the body, so keep dancing, Eve. Keep dancing!
Just wanted to thank you again, Marjorie, for taking the time to comment. It sure ain’t like the old days here in blog land.
I’m coming late to this post, but this is the moment I needed to read it. I’m facing some difficult changes, and I like the image of carving new shapes into my life and moving through all those little barbs of emotion to get to a new space. Thanks for writing and posting this.
Mary, I’m so pleased you found this useful to you. Change is hard enough when we’re wanting it. That it is difficult change you are facing–you are in my thoughts.