Be like driftwood: medicine for failure
When your original plan fails or no matter how hard you try or what you do you just can’t achieve your goal, what do you do? Do you come up with plan B?
Maybe.
Or maybe you suspect or even recognise that perhaps there is something in your human planning and deadline setting and trying to make things happen that have lead you here.
Or maybe your goal, dream or plan really was, as David Whyte says, "...too small for you to live."
You have arrived in the perfect situation to surrender your planning and let the currents take you where they take you while you don't single-mindedly do anything.
For now, you don't have to plan it all out or think it through.
You can surrender all your thinking and scheming and planning for the experience of life, which is exactly like the vast ocean—it carries and supports you even when you're not aware that is what is happening.
All you have to do is be like driftwood—dreaming, dancing, drifting along with the currents of your life.
I know, it might feel counter-cultural or in conflict with how you’re wired or what you’ve been taught about how to make your dreams and goals come true.
I know that stopping and letting go and not having a destination to aim for can feel really scary. What’s going to happen if you’re not controlling your next move? How will your life end up if you’re not working towards something?
Letting go of what you know and embracing the unknown can feel unsafe and dangerous.
But….
…there is magic in not-knowing and enchantment in mystery.
You cannot fight the current that carries you in this life if it is trying to take you in a different direction…
…well you can try to fight for as long as you like until you’re too exhausted or frustrated to fight anymore.
Maybe being like driftwood is the medicine you need and the faster and more easeful way towards the fulfillment you really seek.
So try this…
Let go of your schedule, your timetables, your calendar, your planning, your busyness and your need to fill in every waking moment with productive doing.
Go outside, exactly as you are.
Go to a park or a forest, a beach or any open space.
Follow your feet that follow your eyes opened as if born anew and seeing for the first time.
Go where they go in circles and lines and zig-zags.
Go to what calls your attention, to what flirts with your senses with its bright pretty colours or curious patterns and shapes.
Wander without aim, without rules or constraints.
Wander with curiosity.
Wander knowing that it produces nothing specific yet yields everything…
Because wandering this way will help you reconnect with the instinct of your soul and your soul’s dreaming for your life that was cut off and lost when your life became ruled by your calendar and time, and the idea that you have to do things, be productive and achieve something for your life to matter.
