The Path to Possibilities
I am feeling restless these days. I am content but something is missing.
Usually, when I feel this way it is because, as Anais Nin wrote, “things are calling me; the stars are pulling at my hair once again.” I knew I had shared that quote in an earlier blog post. A quick search and there it was in a February 2022 post, Three Soul Journeys For Older Women.
Guess what I wrote in that blog post? “The week started with a feeling of restlessness.” In that post, I wrote that I was envious of friends starting walking journeys. Then added, “These experiences make me yearn to walk another pilgrimage, short or long, needing to feel the ground solid under my feet as mind, body, and heart become one.” At the time, post-pandemic, I was not eager to travel and I took my own advice and went on some soul journeys instead.
I am back in that same place again, realizing how patterns in my life repeat themselves.
I need to resolve this restlessness, and once again will do this through soul journeys, explored from the comfort of home. A pilgrimage does not need to be measured in steps. I need to travel inwards, not outwards, like a Sufi whose pilgrimage takes place without physical movement.
My world has gotten small as I hide away from a world that increasingly scares me with its ugliness. A painful, arthritic knee has made my physical world even smaller. (Although I finally have an appointment to assess my knee in two weeks! Yeah!) My love of solitude accounts for the contentment I feel. I can think of no place I would rather be than surrounded by books, listening to classical music as I write, research, and create. My solitude also limits me. In this cocoon, possibilities feel limited, four this world, and myself.
Although I am not one for making resolutions, I do set time aside between the old and the new for reading and reflection. In revisiting Embracing Possibilities, a Soul Matters theme offered to Unitarian congregations several years ago, I realized my restlessness is a positive force, a slow awakening as the new year begins, to a world of possibilities. The introduction to Embracing Possibilities states,
“We tell ourselves so many small stories about who we and others are. So many tiny tales of what the world could be. Part of it has to do with real life defeats. But often a bigger part of it is about imagined fear and protecting ourselves. There’s comfort in convincing yourself that the effort is hopeless; that way you don’t have to try and risk failure, hurt or disappointment, yet again.
All of which is to say that maybe embracing possibility has more to do with being a people of vulnerability and courage than we’ve thought. The work isn’t just about believing in possibility. It’s about being willing to endure a few wounds along the way. It can hurt to be hopeful.”
I began writing Ageless Possibilities five years ago partly because “I wanted to explore the ageless possibilities that are open to us as we become wiser, speak our truth, and live meaningful lives.” I suspect that losing hope for this crazy world we live in is playing havoc with my personal quest for possibilities. The restlessness I feel is the stars pulling at my hair once again, nudging me back to possibilities.
Here are a few questions from Soul Matters that I will be thinking about. I would love to hear your thoughts.
How has your belief in the possibility of a better world grown or shrunk over the past couple of years?
Who taught you the most about defying expectations and unleashing your potential and possibility? How did their courageous living spill over into your own?
What if you understood the word impossible as a dare?
What are others learning about living and leaning into possibility by watching you?