One of the things I am most grateful for is my ongoing relationship with Magic (the moments of connection between me and the Mystery). I say that because it is a relationship. That connection is a choice that I make more and more and more times a day, and the more I connect to it, the more I am led and the more connections happen.
I am now at a point where I can see magic in almost everything – even in the things that seem hard or impossible.
Once when I posted something on Instagram about being grateful, I got an email from someone telling me that I shouldn’t ‘only post good things’. She said people wouldn’t be able to relate to me if I wasn’t telling them the truth.
The truth?
That little email made me question everything that I put out into the world.
Whenever I send out an email that has a positive message, or gives the impression that life is good, I get unsubscribes.
I’ve had friends stop commenting on my posts, and stop answering emails – ones who were huge supporters of our move.
Comparison is such a brutal companion for so many of us. I feel it. Sometimes I am compelled to unsubscribe or to just stop looking at certain people or certain feeds. I feel triggered by the beauty or the youth or the truth or the challenge or the anger or the love or the success or the questions or the depth or the wonder or the insight or the delicacy or the talent that I see, and in the past instead of wondering about that, I have turned my face away.
One of the easiest examples of where I feel comparison is with our house. We have a beautiful house (for which I am profoundly grateful), but it’s not finished or even very furnished yet, and when I look at some of my feeds, I see lovely cozy spaces full of books and candles and comfortable furniture and kids and cats and art supplies and desks and plants and a real feeling of ‘home’. When I look at these I feel a deep longing for this in my own life.
The trouble with comparison is that it often also comes with guilt or shame or irritation or some other super-fun side order. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to, and that comparison can be one of your biggest teachers.
I invite you to try this:
1. Scroll through your Instagram feed until you find an image that gives you a twinge.
2. Really look at it.
3. Ask yourself these questions (but try to keep it in a spirit of learning more about what your soul wants. Don’t add guilt or shame to this.)
What is it about this image that makes me want?
When I look at this image, what do I want?
Is there healing or grieving that I need to do here?
What is this showing me about how I want to feel?
What can I do to bring more of this feeling into my life?
Seeing your own pain, your own wants, your own needs, and your own fears reflected like this may be scary at first, but by doing this you have a massive opportunity to heal your old stories and your old patterns. You may have some healing to do, but feeling those feelings will free up space for new dreams to come through.
In that space, magic can happen.
One version of the truth is that I have experienced heartbreak and devastating loss. There are things and people and dreams that I mourn, that I regret, and that I deeply wonder about. We won’t ever have kids. I struggle pretty much every day with visibility and relevance and who do I think I am? I have made peace with food, but I still carry weight. I am a hermit who has had her heart broken, which makes making and keeping friends difficult. There is stuff in my life that breaks my heart. I have guilt about where my life and my choices have brought me. I am a rebellious good girl (a Scorpio with a Virgo rising), so I am often in heated negotiation with myself. I miss my family and my country – and now my old adopted country – deeply.
There’s more – not the least of which is that I am afraid a lot of the time.
But the other truth is that in all of the hard and the sad and the afraid there is also a place where I choose to connect to an even deeper truth: that there is more to all of this life business than I can ever imagine or understand.
In those places and those moments, more and more each day, I actively choose to find the Magic. I know that the only power I have is the one to decide how I am going to react in this moment. Over the past 15 or so years, I have consciously developed a way of being in the world that is more curious than careful and more wondering than fearful.
I’ve discovered that I am more powerful when I do things on purpose.
I don’t run from sadness or comparison or fear anymore. I also don’t ignore it, or pretend it isn’t happening, or always put it out there for the world to see. I actively turn my face to it. I wonder about it. I feel it. I talk to it. I do everything I can to not install it into my stories and my cells (just to have it come up again later on).
Yes, I am still afraid, and yes, I still compare, and yes, I still have a ways to go, but I also have come to a place where it seems that everything has something to say to me. I have come to a place where I can see the story more than I see the fear. I have come to a place where nearly everything is magic.
It’s been a lot of work, but the work has been worth it.
So the truth – for me – is that there is more to this life than I can possibly imagine, and that I get to choose to be present for and to respond to it in the best way I can in each moment. None of those moments are perfect, but I’m doing my best to make more and more and more of them Magical.
That is my work in the world; that is what I want to share with you! That is what makes me want to run up to you, laughing, and show you the latest weird bug that has appeared, or the family of monkeys who wake us at 4am, or the way the sun is touching the trees, or what is in my heart. That is what I want to write about.
There is a path through the forest, and there is a light just around the bend. Can you see it? Do you want to find it with me? Let’s go together!
The more magic you see, the more you’ll find. 😉
That’s the truth.
xo
This is so real and so beautiful. thank you!