I feel like I’m in a murky fog. A caterpillar soup. I feel heavy. Like I’m sitting in tar.

I don’t want to move. And I want to move.

*

Even calling that out has a funny effect. I resist it a little bit less.

I feel connected a little bit more.

Are our emotions uncomfortable, or is resisting our emotions uncomfortable?

My feelings from that moment are alchemized through poetry into presence.

Where are you trying to get to? And what’s the rush?

Right here is kind of beautiful, when you don’t try to go somewhere else.

If I had spent more time outdoors today, I might be feeling less heavy. Would that be better? I’m not so sure. What’s wrong with feeling low?

It has a nice kind of grizzly, gravelly texture. A dark colour. A scratchy texture under my skin.

Pretty cool that I get to observe that tension.

Movement. Clenching in my jaw. My neck. My mouth. My cheeks. My shoulders. I’m letting it move through me.

I feel like a Gollum, or some other hideous movie creature, when I move like this.

Or… I can let it move.

How often do we stop ourselves moving?

Growing up, you get told to sit still enough times (in that tone of voice) and you learn that you shouldn’t move around so much.

It becomes, in our mind, as much a law of nature as the sun rising and setting.

We forget that we even have another option.

Don’t be too loud, or too quiet. Be the right amount.

Don’t be stupid. But don’t show off either.

Maybe Goldilocks was on to something.

Wonky shit happens when we pursue just right.

Everything has a too much and a too little. And some authority figure who knows what those amounts are.

And your job is to comply.

That seems to be the society that we’ve set up. And it works. For some definition of works.

Until it doesn’t.

*

I remember standing in the party store with 3 of my friends. We were twelve years old, and I was buying a Valentine’s card for my crush.

I was feeling shame in my chest, my shoulders slouched.

And a sense of confusion, a feeling of being “out of my depth” that I was trying hard to mask. I didn’t know how to navigate these things.

“You should definitely get this one,” one of my friends said, pointing at a card with a lewd message in it.

“Yeah, totally, she’ll love it,” the other boys all piled in. With the kind of conviction that—who was I to doubt it?

Even at that age, I had learnt to defer my opinions to what other people thought would be cool. We all do it; peer pressure is hardly unique to my childhood.

But it makes me think about how we navigate the views of others versus the views of ourselves.

Looking back, deep down, I knew that I didn’t want to get that card.

But I didn’t know how to listen to myself.

*

One Saturday afternoon, maybe a year earlier, I was sitting on the living room carpet around a board game (Trivial Pursuit), and telling my mum that I didn’t want to go to my friend’s sleepover that night.

I wouldn’t tell her why.

“I just don’t feel like it,” I insisted.

The truth was I was ashamed, because I knew the other boys had started wearing boxer shorts, and I was still wearing Y-fronts, and I was afraid they would see that and tease me.

And I couldn’t say all this to my family for fear that they’d tease me about the teasing.

Eventually she managed to get the truth out of me… and she was fine with it. She helped me get hold of some appropriate underwear and I went to the sleepover.

But that moment didn’t change my relationship with shame—because I could never be sure the loving outcome would be the outcome.

Let’s just say my crush wasn’t quite as forgiving about the lewd Valentine’s card as my mum was about the underwear upgrade.

One time I would show myself and be held with love.

Another time I would show myself and be teased or yelled at.

There’s no safety in an intermittent reward.

The message I received was clear: the world is not a safe place to be you.

There must be a way to survive in the world—everyone else is doing it.

If you could just be like them, then you’ll be fine.

You’ll survive. You’ll be loved.

*

Show yourself
I’m dying to meet you
Show yourself
It’s your turn
Are you the one I’ve been looking for
All of my life?
Show yourself
I’m ready to learn

— Elsa, “Show Yourself”, Frozen II

I don’t know where to take this stream.

Which, in itself, is part of the same pattern.

If I’m trying to make a decision about how to do something, the fact that I’m in the mode of trying to make a decision is already built on a belief there’s a right and a wrong way to go about it.

On some level, at least for me, this is usually more in the direction of what will make this externally good? What will be approved of? What will be accepted? What will be welcomed?

There’s another orientation.

Which is which one feels true for me? Which one do I feel more connected to?What do I feel drawn to do? What would I enjoy? What interests me? What makes me curious?

But what if there is somewhere I’m trying to get to?

Surely I have to pick the right way to go, to get there, I hear myself cry.

Yes. And no.

Having goals, having an intention, is wonderful. I’d even say it’s critical to our contentment as human beings. A very core need. To have something to strive towards.

At the same time, how are we interpreting strive?

How much am I in the place of trying, with my conscious mind, to make things move toward where I want them?

How much am I in trust? In faith? That my intentions are fundamentally good. That my intuition and skills and presence are fundamentally good. That, as part of this crazy beautiful tapestry of the universe, my enjoyment is a marker of what will allow me to flow toward what I want.

How do we balance control and letting go?

They’ve been asking that question for thousands of years.

I’m not sure this dude on the internet is going to be the one to solve that.

What if we don’t have to balance them?

What if we let them balance us?

Those dots in the yin-yang.

There is control in letting go.

To control is to be controlled. To control is to hide your deepest self. To stay safe.

Which is a beautiful thing to do. No shade on it. It’s just cool to know that when that’s not serving you anymore, there might be a warm bubble bath of other options.