Whatever plans we might have had for 2020, it seems the universe had other ones. It seems as though none of our dreams were well-served by this fateful year. Seems being the operative word.
None of my plans for 2020 survived the onslaught – but my dreams did. Better than survived, my dreams crystallised and began to shape up. The year of standing still allowed some things to fall away and helped others to move forward. It created opportunities and connections that I do not believe would have seemed so obvious but for the nature of the times.
The solitary spring and the 30 days wild of June sharpened my focus and give me space and a self-created sense of urgency to capture the images and get the words down, to tie them together, to make something of them, to create.
Perhaps they were nothing more than practice pieces for the most part, but practice becomes discipline, and discipline becomes mastery. We have only but to start, and then to continue.
I don’t yet claim discipline let alone mastery, but I have started and I have continued. I looked for help. I looked for inspiration. Both flooded in my direction, swamping me almost, until I figured out that I have no need to take it all on board at once. I can let much of it wash over me now that I know where to find it and how to ask for it.
I let go, or tried to let go, of attachment to the methodology in favour of the result. I let go, or tried to let go, of the result in favour of the process. Methodology and process are not the same thing. One is pre-written, the other evolves.
It is all still a work-in-progress, trying to prefer input over output, process over result, trust over impatience.
My achievement ~ and I am still achievement-oriented ~ is the recognition that it is a work, and it is in progress. It is on track. When I look ahead, there is still a great deal of mist across the way, but when I look back I can see how far I have come in this year, these last two, three, five years.
There are coaches who say that the first question to be answered is: what you do you want?
And that the second question is: what do you really want?
That second question doesn’t just explain why we think whatever we say in answer to the first question; it also gives us options to pursue if our first-level wants are unobtainable or unattainable. What we really want can be satisfied in many ways, other than those most obvious to us. Maybe the less obvious ways will prove to be even more satisfying.
When I journal around these questions, I tend to hide them in specifics. I don’t ask what I want, but rather whether I want X? Yes / No questions are easier to answer than open ones; the trick is to remember that the ‘yes’ or the ‘no’ opens the door to question that was hidden, and to be brave enough to answer that one too.
One morning this week, I was thinking about my playing around with words, and in particular my instinctive approach to my poems, and how little effort I put into the re-working and refining of them the way a great poet is required to do. And so, I asked whether I wanted to be “great”.
Do I want to be great? Or rich? Well, I’m already rich…as for great…I want to be read. I want to be both beautiful and useful. I want the words to be meaningful. To help. To inspire. To raise a smile, or stem a tear.
I want to touch someone’s soul.
Woah! Phew. Well, that’s a mission statement. I want to touch someone’s soul.
How dare I assume that I am anywhere near capable of doing that? It is true though. That is what I want my words and pictures, in isolation and/or in combination, to do. I want someone to feel them, to be moved by them, without necessarily understanding how or why. Do I want to be great? No…but I want to be that good.
So then: if that is my real want, if that is my dream, when I look back at 2020 I have to ask if the situation got in the way of it. My answer must be: not at all. Quite the reverse. It gave me time and space. It led me to people who give me honest feedback. The money I would have spent on travel has gone into workshops and on-line courses and tutor retainers. It has brought inspirational people into my life and given me reasons to step away from situations that no longer serve and projects that no longer light me up.
If you’re looking for ticked-off achievements, milestones and goals, you won’t find them here. The only gold stars I got this year were for effort. I applaud myself for completing long-term projects, proving that I can do it, but the quality is not publishable, some of it is laughably, excruciatingly poor. Some of it is better.
Apprentice pieces.
They prove however that I am on the right road. They have brought validation and support. Quite good in parts, as the curate said.
The pieces I like, the pieces that others have liked, are signposts that confirm the road: this way, they say. No destination, no miles yet to be travelled, just confirmation: this way. They are confirmatory like the white blazes on trees along the Appalachian Trail. It’s up to you to know where you are and how far along, but it’s comforting to know that you are still on the trail. Step confidently. This way.
That is what I have learned this year. If we do go confidently in the direction of our dreams, it doesn’t matter in the short term whether we reach them or not; what matters is that we know we are trying, we know we are working, at the right thing, and we keep on having the confidence to take the next step – even we when we’re scrambling back to our feet from the last fall.
I have learned that the compass is more important than the map. The terrain shifts, but direction remains true.
Like everyone I have had to navigate a year in which the universe said No. However, that year has now turned and I have decided that 2021 is a year of possibility, a year in which we still need to accept what is, because some of it will be around for a long time yet, equally a year in which we can shift up our own energy and counter the No with a Yes. I am saying Yes to possibility.
Yes to trying new things and new ways of doing them.
Yes to living with less: less choice, less money, less freedom, less connectivity.
Yes to living with more: more creativity, more contentment, more simplicity, more connection.
Yes to less certainty and more adventure.
Yes to less expectation and more unexpected joy.
Yes to being willing to fold the map and hold the compass.
Yes to accepting the sheer audacity of a dream and daring to step confidently, one step at a time, towards it.
I invite you to join me.
