Writer’s block is no joke. I’ve been sitting at this computer, either typing on the keyboard or speaking into the microphone, for several hours now. I’ve started and abandoned over five different pieces of work, because I’ve been trying to find the thread of what to write about tonight.
I’ve been doing this work long enough to realize that when I can’t seem to find my way, and when nothing seems to be working the way it should, it’s because I’m supposed to write something that is going to touch someone specifically.
So if that’s you, I really hope this is what you need.
Because as I sat and reread those five pieces that are now just fragments on my desktop, I realized there was one single theme running through all of them. One simple truth that is so easy to say, and yet so freaking hard to do. Not the concept is difficult to understand, but that to actually execute on that understanding requires a surrender not only of ego, but sometimes of dreams.
Because often the thing that is holding you back is the thing that you can’t stop holding onto.
Many years ago, I heard an incredibly wise statement from someone who honestly I didn’t expect it from. That probably sounds like a terrible judgment, but this wasn’t somebody who was particularly eloquent of speech, nor expressive in his manner. Yet he said something that really struck me, and that stayed with me for a really long time now.
“The older I get the less I know, but what I do know I am more sure of”.
As humans we tend to “know” so many things. It’s our way of surviving the chaos that is this universe into which we are born. We believe things should be a certain way; that what we see as good should always triumph; that the “bad” things we’ve done should disqualify us from a certain kind of happiness.
Sometimes we “know” so much that we are imprisoned by walls of our own certainty.
And yet so many of those “truths” that we cling to honestly don’t serve to make us happy. Sometimes we are so full of expectations about how the world should be, and about how our lives should turn out, that we miss the beauty and the wonder of what actually is here and now.
But giving up that “knowledge” is to embrace uncertainty, and the possibility that everything we know could be wrong.
Which is a horrible thing to experience. As someone who is very high in need certainty, I hate living with the possibility that I could be wrong about so many things. Yet the longer I live, the more I am confronted with the understanding that so many things that I “knew” in my former years were actually wrong, and that almost everything that has helped me back, has been a misunderstanding in my own mind.
And learning to let go and embrace uncertainty is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Because I’m one of those people who tends to hold onto things way too long. Maybe it was the “truth” that I couldn’t be successful. Another one was the concept that I didn’t have anything to say that could be of value to others. If we go way back, one of those difficult little things that I held for far too long was the understanding that I didn’t deserve to be happy because there was something inherently wrong with me.
The day that I realized that everything holding me back was not in the world, but only inside my head, was both an incredible gift of realization and a terrible moment of truth.
If I’m honest, I still struggle to let go of many of those beliefs that are so ingrained in me, because it feels like I’m breaking off parts of my soul in my effort to move beyond them. Giving up a “known” for something that is “unknown” brings with it the risk of failure and a feeling like a fool, and it also opens the door for the possibility that I have been wrong about so many things, and that I have been the single solitary jailer in the penitentiary of my soul.
All because I held so tightly to something that wasn’t necessarily so.
Whoever you are out there, I hope this message reaches you. I don’t know what you’re holding onto, and I don’t know what’s holding you back, but I hope you can find it in your heart to maybe spend a few minutes letting go of that “belief” that is making you unhappy, so that you can find a pathway to your own peace and understanding.
The universe is hard enough as it is. Let’s not make it any worse by holding onto things that just hold us back.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings