Sometimes things just don’t go to plan – and then what?
Like all of us, the last few years haven’t exactly turned out the way we expected. Me – quitting my job, leaving a loving relationship behind and sacrificing the yummiest apartment because you know, ~London~. An eye roll at a Covid article on the plane and three months of back to back interviews, speed dating (but for a room) and many delusional days thinking… 'it’ll just blow over’ I eventually realised it certainly wasn’t going to ‘blow over’.
Flash forward – back in Newcastle feeling like a toddler lost in a ball pit. Yet the toddler is me and the ball pit is my childhood bedroom.
After a state of serious denial I began on a constant thought loop desiring, comparing and sizing up everything to the life, opportunities and career I almost had. Yet the thing is.. it is hard to measure almost, because almost doesn’t matter.
It wasn’t until I willingly, (probably out of exhaustion of myself to be honest) surrendered all control and stopped resisting everything that came my way did my life so gracefully fall back together in a way I could barely even recognise. The sooner I let go of the illusion that things were meant to be different did I start to accept things simply as they are. Perhaps there is splendour in the sheer fact that sometimes we simply do not understand.
As we all learnt the hard way through the most testing years of most of our lives, there is no fun in the struggle for control. Sometimes we are left with no choice but to stop swimming upstream and let this beautiful cosmic machine move forward. It is scary and unnerving but when we stop unraveling every thread of not knowing and trying to sew it into anything that makes sense the world subtly rewards you. And hey, perhaps it’s the ‘world’ (I would like to think I was that 'important') or perhaps it’s merely opening ourselves to all sorts of wonderful possibilities that aren’t there when we’re attached to one ‘right’ path.
I try to approach these challenging pivots the way I approach my practice – allowing myself the kindness to be imperfect, brave and present. Life is kind of like a good pilates class, sometimes we yell and curse our way through it and sometimes it all just flows…. yet we always feel better for giving it a red-hot crack.
When we trust that we’re okay no matter what circumstances come our way, whether it be a side plank or the fiftieth layer in a 4 point series – we don’t need to micromanage the universe (or our bodies). Maybe we quiver and shake but the most important thing is to just-keep-moving.