Existing

“What to do with my time…” was the note I ended on yesterday. In a way it is the question of our existence, and yet a question that often moves to the background of our lives filled with joys and sadness of various tastes and colors. It is hard to escape this question when bound to a few square-meters.

Being in that hotel was so obviously the start of a new chapter that it was hard to pretend otherwise. There had been several big shifts in my life already, often much more chaotic and less clean than this one. There is great power and possibility in those moments. Like a snake shedding its skin or the metaphorical butterfly leaving its cocoon, it is possible to leave behind not only relationships and problems but also parts of yourself. It’s an awesome possibility and it shouldn’t be ignored lightheartedly.

But there are also the challenges that come with a clean slate: Who am I? What do I want to do? Who is the person I want to introduce this new world to? A life chapter is a new chapter is not a new book, hence there are many threads to take up again, threads its easy to get entangled in if you ignore them.

It were questions like these that orbited and circled around me. Questions not without danger: In times like these, hopes, ideas, and wishes are easily born and adopted that hide somewhere in the dark corners of your psyche and that are subsequently difficult to let go off. And of course, I would stumble over and fight with many of them in the time to come. The problem with such ideas is not that they are too aspirational and carry disappointment. The problem is that such ideas are children of the person you where, and the person you might become needs the world around you to grow – a world you don’t know yet, a world that want to be seen with open eyes and a beginner’s mind.

But life is life, and your last important lesson the most important lesson to unlearn. So even while knowing all this, I was destined to walk this path once more, hoping that the idea-children I were to adopt would treat me lovingly. That I too will be able to love them and to let go once it’s time…

(I did.)