As I head towards the start of another year, I am thinking about what it means and what I need, I am thinking about where I am and where I am going, and also about where I have come from and what I have learned during the last year or so.
I accept that I am stressed whenever I have to rely on others, whenever I am dependent upon someone else, whenever I have to wait before I can do what I have decided to do. I don't ask for help easily, because immediately what I need help with is taken out of my hands and I have to rely, be dependent, wait. I feel constrained, caged, tamed.
It has been a year of having to ask for help, having to rely on other people. Naturally, not everyone met their promises, but most people did. And I wouldn't be where I am now without them. And I am grateful.
It has been a year of having to live outside my comfort zone, not by choice, but by necessity and only now that this stage is complete do I understand how draining that has been, only now do I understand that I had no hope of achieving everything else alongside it, only now do I know that I can celebrate what was, nevertheless, achieved.
So am I now going to step back into comfort? Having lived my year with the mantra "Be fearless", am I going to breathe a sigh of relief and step back and breathe….and relax?
No.
My mantra for my new year is: Wild & Free.
Because my year of having to rely all the time on other people is over, I am now free to rely once again on myself. I could choose to describe my situation as 'lost and alone' and maybe at times during this last year that is exactly how I felt, but there is another side to 'lost' and 'alone' and it is 'wild' and 'free'.
So then the question becomes: what does it mean to be wild and free?
Wild is a walk in the woods,
losing my way among the trees,
but also a step to the dance-floor,
lost in the music.
Wild is by definition: free.
Free is owning my home,
my space,
living on my time,
at my pace.
Free is security.
Wild is laughter,
life looked at sideways,
ignoring clock-time,
sunlight, moonshine
nights,
and endless days.
Free is letting the garden find its way,
and waiting to see.
Wild is watching what grows,
and is growing in me.
Wild & Free means being seen
standing tall,
saying what I believe.
It means doing the work
I want to do,
not because I have to.
It means, simply, being
me.
