STABILITY IN LIFE CAN FOOL YOU INTO THINKING NOTHING IS CHANGING WHEN REALLY, CHANGE IS CONSTANT.
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Leaving my job last summer has been my brand for the past six months. It seems that everything I do and feel lately has somehow flowed from that. But it goes further, because there is a lot that I am doing and feeling. Even though much of it feels futile and intangible.
Though I’ve never been interested in the idea of being “multi-passionate”, I admit that that’s exactly what I am. There are many things that call my attention every day – many things I am passionate and curious about. I find myself running between working on my pottery website to wondering the last time I wrote a poem, to wanting to write more of my novel to feeling bad because I haven’t cycled in a while to deciding I want to knit a jumper, to realising it’s been a while since my last blog post. I can do all these things. But I get stuck in a cycle of paralysis when few of them have the foundations for me to ease back into their development (i.e., no ideas for a blog post idea or poetry rejections). I find it easier to hold one ball at a time while the others drop. And that’s not anything groundbreaking. Our brains can only handle so much at once.
As I chase everything and subsequently nothing all at once, an image of me running helter-skelter develops in my mind. Chasing the wind, trying to grab a balloon floating into the sky while a pot of rice burns on the cooker and music blares from my laptop while I’m on FaceTime to someone and a call from my mum is incoming. It’s all happening at the same time. And paying a shred of attention to all these things just makes me feel restless. Chasing them all is a true image of that.
But I’m reminded of a brief conversation I had with my sister a few months ago. We were in church and a four-year-old girl was running around with her little brother. So loud, energetic and happy. I asked my sister why children have so much energy, and she told me it’s because they are growing. They need energy to grow. Their bodies are hungry for all that is needed to expand them into the world.
It has stuck with me since then. And last week I thought to myself, am I restless because I am growing? It’s most convenient to tell myself that yes, that’s why. So naturally I hesitate to fully adopt this thought because isnt that too idealistic?
Yet overwhelmingly, the epiphany replays in my mind. I still don’t know where my life is headed (but who does anyway?) and I am starting to let go of what I think I must believe, do and be, and that worries me. So could this restlessness just be a symptom of my gradual expansion into something different?
Children grow and so do teenagers. Adults do too. In fact, outside of growth, we are simply developing and changing all the time. So why would it be a surprise to me that I am growing right now? I’ve always been passionate about growth but I’m realising that it was on my mind less and less when I was working. I think that’s because stability in life can fool you into thinking nothing is changing when really change is constant. Moreover when you are not stable, change suddenly feels vast, present and unapologetic.
That’s where I am at the moment. Even if I truly am growing at a faster rate today than I was a year ago, I accept that the rate is allowed to change. With that I find peace. And overall, I am happy to accept that the restlessness I feel could just be a symptom of roots growing deeper, a plant budding under the sunlight, a season changing.
Have you felt restless lately?
Some Variables 