I got very fucking lost today.
I often get lost but this was a particularly bad one arriving at Crystal palace for an 8.45am dental appointment after only 4 hours of stress tainted sleep and only arriving at my destination at 10 past 10.
I cried on the bus as the dentist told me that it was, obviously, too late to attend the appointment and I am experiencing many ‘straw that breaks the camels back’ moments in my life of late.
Because the truth is, I’m not having a good year so far.
On the surface, things appear okay, but inside of my soul, that secret place we all retreat to in our moments of solitude, there is suffering.
Nothing really bad has happened, but the culmination of a lifetime of self-sacrifice and a number of different factors over the last few months has led me to experience an inner turmoil over the last few months that have impacted my well- being and creativity inordinately.
The weather isn’t helping and everywhere I turn I have felt felt that all I face is blocks to moving forward with my classes, which in turn creates a sense of purposelessness, of failing, as I know I want to be teaching, it is nectar to my soul.
But I often feel like I cannot breathe at the moment.
I cannot focus and I cannot get going with moving forwards.
& getting lost today reminded me of the wider scenes of my life at present.
I could feel the stress levels inside me increasing the longer I found myself in the lostness, my teeth grinding and my thoughts and frustrations about my experience rising and swelling through me.
None of this helped of course, and each time google maps told me I was getting closer to my destination and then randomly re-routing sending me on a completely different path I noticed myself becoming less and less present, more and more stressed within my experience.
& then I noticed how my reaction to the experience was impacting my experience and I surrendered.
I surrendered to the lostness.
I leaned back into the capacity to be able to respond instead of react to my experience.
I re-found my breath.
I started noticing what I could feel, see, hear, what was there in my experience, but not in the experience of my own suffering, what else existed outside of myself, what else was always there to come back to, no matter how far into myself or my inner world that I travel to.
I started practicing all of the stuff I advocate for, all of the things that I teach, but rarely do.
& then something started happening.
Something softened.
& then I laughed.
I laughed at the ridiculousness of my experience.
I smiled at the okayness of feeling lost.
I voicenoted my friend who laughed with me, but also empathised at the ridiculousness of life and shared with me some wisdom about forestry and how sometimes the world needs to burn down to create space for the new.
In the midst of the burning down of the forests of my life, I smiled knowing that there would be a point in time when I finally found the fucking dentist, and that that, on a deeper level, also means that I will find myself again.
In the slightly calmer state- I re-looked at my map and checked the address for the hundreth time and I realised that the dentist address in Google maps was in the wrong place, and so even though the little spotlight on maps kept telling me that I was going the wrong way, finallyyyyy, after almost 1.5 hours of deep lostness, I found the fucking dentist.
& the lostness led me here.
Right here, in a coffee shop, finally starting to access my creativity again.
I’ve been meaning to come and do some work in a coffee shop for about 2 years now to start working on my own creative projects, and I happened to have my laptop on me today so whilst wait for my rearranged appointment I’m actually fucking writing, something which because of my lack of sleep, would never have happened had I made it in time for my original appointment as I am so tired I just want to go to bed.
But here we are.
Finding oneself within the lostness, finding oneself in spite of the lostness, finding oneself because of the lostness.
We can kick and scream and fight and battle with the lostness, or we can surrender & begin to see what it is here to teach us.
I do not feel good rn, but I know that I will feel good again, and my teeth will be clean in an hour or so.
& that is enough for now.
All is coming.
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