1000 Words On: Stumbling Down the Path of Life
Risk is part of what I am choosing along the way. How much should I risk and how does it bring value to my life when I take risks? How certain should I be when I make decisions? Should I follow my emotions and decide spontaneously what I will do? These are decisions I seem to make unconsciously.
Douglas Holwerda
At what point do I know how to live life, to know what I am doing? I make big and small decisions every day, assuming I know what influences the decisions I make, the decisions that determine the person I become and the life I live. 70 years into this journey has given me evidence that assumptions I have made about knowing what I am doing are never more than partially true, mostly educated guesses. I now recognize what an imperfect process living life is, using the past to live into the future without skipping the present, without creating too many messes along the way to regret or overcome.
I take solace in an anonymous quote I heard and repeat, “Know that you know what you know, and know that you don’t know what you don’t know.” It helps me to trust myself to rely on what I have learned in/from life, but it also reminds me that I am often stumbling into the unknown, unable to predict where decisions take me, unable to know what I don’t know. It is the trust that keeps the anxieties and fears of uncertainty from looming too large, inhibiting the process by creating un-helpful and unnecessary limitations. Standing on a foundation of knowing what I know, or self-acceptance for what I don’t know, allows me to keep going and maybe to see the adventure of living.
Risk is part of what I am choosing along the way. How much should I risk and how does it bring value to my life when I take risks? How certain should I be when I make decisions? Should I follow my emotions and decide spontaneously what I will do? These are decisions I seem to make unconsciously.
When I play it safe, I stick closer to what I know. I stay closer to choices that will assure approval, from myself and those around me. I live according to plans I deem healthy and worthwhile, living toward goals and structuring my life with predictability. I attach myself to beliefs about how things should be to feel more secure. I assume expectations for myself and those around me to live an organized life, in alignment with my values and vision of what it means to be a good person, my ideal self. I do not stray far from what others expect of me or ways that I can feel accepted. Often, I pay more attention to what others think of me than what it is I might discover for myself. That all sounds good…if I can just follow the plan, live up to the ideas I have of the way I should be, and to make sure those around me approve of me in order to accept myself.
The truth is, I cannot do it…nor do I want to. I have never wanted to play it too safe, and now I continue to find ways to extend myself into the riskier and unknown parts of who I am. I keep finding pleasure that comes from not knowing what I am doing, stumbling into the unknown. Trying new things. That pleasure might be short-term gratification, but more often it comes from living an adventurous life and discovering aspects of myself that I did not know were me.
Risks and creativity seem to go together. We must be willing to be new at something if we have the desire to create. It helps to feel secure enough in myself to step into the unknown. Secure in myself is another way of saying I have gained enough self-approval to stray from the task of seeking it, particularly from others. I can play it less safe because I do not fear judgment or the security that comes from sticking to a plan rather than discovering life as we go. Stumbling down the path of life suggests that I will encounter rough spots and make mistakes and do not always feel I am in control. Stumbling always happens in the present because that is where I am living on the edge of the known. It is not painless, but the pain comes from engaging life as it is rather than staying on a course, following a plan or chasing a goal, each of which can take me away from the present. It is not that I preclude living into the future, but that I turn the results into the by-product of what I do in the present. To stumble through a creative life, I focus on the present and let the future become what it will. If the present is OK, I trust the future to be OK as well. I am more likely to see an opportunity or to follow an inspiration when I am present. I often stay longer with something because I am drawn into it, albeit the pain of another or the beauty of the moment. From the present I feel adaptable, flexible, and able to incorporate the change that is happening.
When I am vulnerable enough to give up control, the overuse of willpower, I open an ability to respond to what is. I find the freedom to be empowered to respond in my way to what is happening around us. I do not mind stumbling because I know the path I am on is my own path. I get to claim it, rather than to follow the path of others, hoping that it leads me where I want to go.
Stumbling through life I have found strength because I have picked myself up and started again. I have gained flexibility because I have discovered that life changes in ways I cannot control. I have become both resilient, when difficulties present themselves, and resourceful, able to live within the limitations of what truly is. When I give myself over to the creative process, I can freely express the imperfect person that I am with the joy of living.
