Questions & Whims

I have a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainty. That's oddly something I've never had too much trouble with in my life, certainty, or the lack of it rather. Open-ended questions don't bother me. Not having a set plan is more my M.O. than adhering to an outline. So I'm living with the questions, giving them space to wander around in me. I'm letting myself become an experiment of sorts, but in the most effortless way, waiting for things to rise out of my subconscious throughout the day and week.

I like to discuss theories and ideas with people, I like to write about them, but to delve into personal thought occurs more when it possesses me. The many things loose in my mind percolate and seek exit or attention whenever they please. Whims aren't good travel guides. No, that's not true at all, I take it back; they're excellent travel guides, but terrible professors and life coaches. Over the years I've learned to weigh the whims and fancies, determining which ones will pass and which ones will have some pull. Some of the questions that are coming up have slowly risen in me over time. It's as if they've been growing, a part of me, almost unknown, but recent events have knocked them loose.

I've asked a lot of questions in my life that as I explored them, I began to find there were never answers to be found. I've come to accept this as a part of life. And sometimes a question's answer is useless as it begs to send us to the past to correct some thing, or take the other path at the fork, and we know that we cannot.

A mere week or two ago, as I pondered the sudden discontentment I had with things not being what I expected, I felt as if I am at a precipice. It was a strange premonition that I really had no reason or cause to believe, other than maybe an odd bit of hope amid disappointment. This thought that I might be about to head in a direction that was unprecedented, but not an omen by any means; an impression of good. The logical side of me wants to blame the beautiful spring day it was as I walked the park by the river and the sky exuded the color blue as if to visually define it. That side of me wants to say it was my heart fighting to have hope instead of more disappointment.

But the side of me that houses all the orphaned questions believes maybe it was truth. Maybe to get to something new and different and good, I have to get comfortable with the questions, the skepticism, the space. It feels like something of a risk, but I also feel like I'm gathering the breath of courage, as before something big - like a leap.

The Hard Lesson of Vulnerability

I thought I had this whole vulnerability thing down pat. But my heart hurts right now. I keep learning a hard lesson about this, but the lesson is only meant to reiterate that it will be hard; it will be painful.

Vulnerability never seems to get easier. In fact, it feels to me like it's getting harder. I'm fighting getting jaded. I'm fighting myself, trying to hold back the anger that comes out when I'm hurt because that's how sensitive me once learned people will actually listen. If you hurt, more often than not, that's unimportant to he who caused it. Remorse is hard to come by anymore. Vulnerability is supposed to beget vulnerability. It really doesn't. And you can't know until you try, and with every try the will to try depletes.

There's a secondary lesson learned from the fight of vulnerability, and that's compassion. I was brought to learn compassion by falling on my face in vulnerability, time and time again. A bruised and scarred heart recognizes the same when it sees it, and there's a knowing between the two.

So it is I fight and I struggle to remain vulnerable, to be honest, and to be true to myself, in spite of the pain it's caused me my whole life. I repeatedly tell myself that's it's a strength, but it sure as hell feels a lot more like a weakness; like stepping up to a fight without armor. I tire of it. I begin to think to myself, maybe I'll just pass next time. Maybe I'll decide no one is deserving of or trustworthy for my truth, my story. Maybe I'll give up on blazing a trail with honesty, and wait for someone to light a path to me.

But even as I think it, I doubt it. I can't bring myself to believe that the heart can survive without being known. That's the very root of the rejection epidemic: there's risk and the risk is painful. So I have to bring myself back to believing the risk is worth the chance, the possibility that it is in fact a strength and one that someone needs. Likely that will land me used up and tossed aside, as it seems to have a track record of doing. But surely someone needs it; surely another heart needs its story to be held, its tears to be regarded.

So I must do my best to bind up my wound, even while it's still aching, then revisit the worthiness of the cause.