I was chatting with a special friend of ours who is in his late teens, as he is trying to decide what to do with ‘his life’. This is the big time when it’s deemed apparently that kids should be deciding what to do with their lives, as if one decision now should serve them forever. I tried to talk him out of this big picture thinking as its crippling him into indecision, and instead place his attention on what he could do with ‘his time’. The life part will sort itself out as time moves on. We spoke about how his life doesn’t start now that high school has ended, but it started when we were born. This now is just a moment on the length of time we get to call our life. We don’t know where it will end, how will it end, or what might happen in between. We can only place our awareness on this moment within it all. Too much pressure on the whole timeline and the whole thing falls apart.
He said he was trying to have the courage the make the right decision. And we started discussing that bravery is actually what we say no to, not what we say yes to. There is no perfect decision. The ‘right decision’ is simply following one’s heart. Courage is aligning to our hearts and that is sometimes (I have found often) against the well-intentioned advice of everyone around us (I assured him, that was me included as needed). Being able to drop everyone’s expectations and move into experimenting with life, staying curious and making tonnes of ‘failures’ was part of the key to a fulfilled life.
It was a moment of sitting in a garden, surrounded by beautiful palms and succulents, sun shining, after hanging up from him, that I started thinking about all the decisions I have made because I thought I should, instead of what I really wanted. How it’s easier as I’m older to try to navigate this, but I am still often bound in should’s. We must reconcile that everything is an invitation to move beyond what we think we should do, and others ideas for us, and move into alignment with our souls.. So I wanted to invite to reflect on this too.
Sent with love,
Jac x