Ritual

On the last day of every year, since I was in school, I've been making journal entries that sum up the year : mostly things I'm grateful for, experiences and people that propelled me to the next level of personal growth (or were just a lot of fun).

For some reason, I'm unable to do the same thing this year. Not because I'm not grateful - this year has been singularly life-affirming, the ups and downs have been monumental but not catastrophic and I feel as though I've surfed through them and emerged more intact than I was going in. So it's not lack of gratitude, rather it's the insistence of two words, buried deep inside & dying to come out, that makes me do things differently...

The first is Fear. For as far back as I can recall, this word has held me in a vice-like grip. So much so that I'd started to believe it was inseparable from me. Fear in speaking my mind, fear in liking what I liked, fear in living the way I wanted, fear in reaching out to other people, fear of allowing others to reach me. Fear of the dark, fear of the outside, fear of the new, fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of everything I didn't immediately understand and fear of myself. Last year, I began to grasp where this fear was coming from and how it had sometimes saved me from myself. This year, I realised it was time to let it go. Fear had served its purpose and now it must leave.

2010 then, must kickstart the Year...no, the Decade of No Fear. It must be one where I speak my truth, live the life I know I was put on this planet to live and be the most authentic version of myself as I possibly can. I'm excited.

The other word is Trust. It's come up a lot in the last two weeks, more in the context of 'lack of'. I hurled it at someone and had it hurled back at me. When I launched my 'No Trust' missile, I meant no harm, thinking it was nothing more than armour to protect me. How could it ever cause damage? But when it was lobbed back at me (meant, I'm sure, to innocently graze my shoulder and whizz past) I realised just how explosive and destructive it could be.
Trust, I realised, isn't this flaky tool of the weakling or the naive. It isn't detrimental to my inner strength. It doesn't take away from my ability to protect myself. Trust, in fact, allows me to experience everything I've been too chicken to experience all this time.

I don't know...things are still a bit jumbled up in my head. When I say I'd like to trust, I mean it. And I also know that like 'Love', it is more an action than a word. I have no idea how I will allow this word to become a living, breathing organism. As for today, I guess I can start at the very beginning. I can start with trusting the process of life.