Have you had the opportunity in the last decade or so to be quiet and just be?
Or has life gotten in your way?
We make excuses and say we’ll make time for ourselves later, and then ten or twenty years have gone by, and that day of self-discovery hasn’t come. Sometimes, self-discovery is forced upon us by a life circumstance such as a birth, a death, or a job change. We women make more excuses than men because we are so busy taking care of everyone else that the thought of just being with our own thoughts rarely enters our minds.
For me, self-discovery came after the death of my mom and husband two years ago. When they passed, I no longer could make excuses as to why I couldn’t find the time to be alone with myself. I decided that I had to learn how to just be.
At first, I wondered what that would look like for me, and I discovered it meant slowing my life and thoughts down enough to hear what I was thinking and feel what I was feeling.
That is much more difficult than it sounds. Just imagine what would happen if you jumped off your merry-go-round of life and said no to all of the outside influences long enough to sit and be still for days at a time. What would it be like to not have any obligations for your time and attention? People who meditate on a daily basis can relate, but most people do not see how stillness is even possible for them.
It takes practice (Go ahead and laugh!), but it does take practice to sit and do nothing. We need to give ourselves permission to be and contemplate what’s around us. I think we have a fear of facing our own thoughts because we are worried that our thoughts will take us places we don’t want to go. For me, I knew I wanted to just be, but I didn’t really know how. So, I started with pleasant walks in the morning. I found that to be quite relaxing, contemplative time spent in nature.
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