On The Edge Of Something New...

Throughout the course of my life there have been moments when I have stepped outside of the world...when everything is preternaturally quiet...and just for a few seconds...the entire universe seems to be holding its breath...or maybe deeply inhaling...I learned to notice these moments a long time ago...and they've always meant big big big change for me. I've never known what the change will be...and sometimes not even realized the change until years later...but the world has been inhaling all damn day long...and I'm afraid that when it exhales...I am going to be blown to the other side of the world.

It's a very strange feeling...the light is different...sounds seem to come from someplace far away...even when it may just be voices down the hall. It's as if the universe is waiting for me to make a choice...and once I do...it then speeds up...catching up with me...and hurtles me down the new path that I've chosen for myself. It's the feeling of standing at a crossroads...not sure which road leads where...and what's more...you aren't quite sure the decision that you are faced with...only that once its been made...the ride operator yells for you to keep your arms and legs inside the machine at all times...and then let's go of the brake.

The entire world seems to be standing at a cross roads...again...and again...and I'm not sure that the world has been making the right choices. I'm not sure I've been making the right choices. But in the end...who is judging those choices? I end up in a philosophical quandry. I believe that everything in life happens for a reason. Cliche right? But I believe it. I also believe we have free will to make our own choices. I don't believe our choices happen in a vacuum. I believe everything from the most minute life experiences to physical, spiritual, sexual, and mental trauma inform, shape, and push our choices one way or another. Our fears based on those life events play a big role in the choices we make...and our decisions to take those fears on...or not to take them on...also influence which fork in the road we go down. Very few of us have the perspective, opportunity, or privilege to evaluate which is the road less traveled, if that road will take us where we want to go, and if we've had enough vaccinations to get us through what might be an entire jungle full of new life experiences and exotic diseases.

Right now I'm in one of those life places where lots of new things are coming my way...lots of old things are being brought to my attention with new ways of understanding...and there are choices to be made that if I don't actively make them...will be made by default. And I've never been one to take the default option. I take that back. I'm the type of person that likes to believe that he doesn't take the default option...but I've spent quite a bit of my life going with the flow or when the flow has excluded me for whatever reason...trying my damndest to get into the flow...regardless if it is a place that I really want to be or should even be trying to get into. The mainstream is attractive because we are social creatures, and we want to belong. We want to belong so badly that we will knowingly place ourselves in a context that is alien to our most deeply held beliefs...that will drive us crazy and guarantee our unhappiness all because we are afraid of being alone, being outcast, and being outside.  There's that fear again. It's not just regular fear...the fear based on experience...you get burned by a fire and therefore avoid it because you know it is hot...but that irrational fear that is so much more powerful because it has no limitations defined by experience. It is shapeless...or its shape is so expansive that it overrides our mortal senses. If we could just have the courage to step into it...we'd find that most of its largeness is nothing but air.

I'm not sure what decision I have to make. I'm not sure I'll know when I make it. And I'm sure as heck not sure where the road I choose will take me. But there is saying that I find quite useful...if you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always gotten. So if you want something new...then do something different. That's the scariest prospect of them all.