Many years ago, in what now feels like a past life, I met a girl. We spent nearly all our time together, holding hands and having long conversations. One day, she said, "If you were to ask me to be in a relationship with you, I would say yes."
I thought that this was incredibly romantic, and believed the sentiment alone to be enough. I cradled it in my mind, observing and fiddling with it as one might a pen or a toy with restless fingers. Unbeknownst to me, a gradual unwinding had commenced in the background.
We started spending less time together. Being the teenagers that we were, we never talked about it. Eventually we drifted apart, and for months after I couldn't stop wondering what had gone wrong.
Looking back now, it's obvious what happened. And it's also very clear to me that this was not a story about love or teenage romance. Instead, this was a story about how, if we don't make our own choices in life, life will make them for us.
I am thinking about how we did not grieve such events back then—we simply accepted and internalised. As an adult, I now understand that in the absence of truth and information, we all create stories, beliefs, and hypotheses about how the world works.
The formula is simple: reality = confusion + time.
I think that our lives have a way of knowing when we are choosing to live with one foot in safety and the other in limbo, and we will be reminded of this until we are ready to start doing differently.
In Emily P. Freeman's new book, she coins the term 'liminal hallways'—non-spaces that we languish in because of choices that we are not making, where we experience the events of our lives not with consciousness or with resolve, but with a kind of helplessness. And because of this, we are neither 'here' nor 'there'. Instead, we are stuck, and we somehow believe this to be destiny.
A couple of months back, I found myself in a space where despite seeing that there were many things happening in my life, I felt tired and lost.
I was having lots of fun dabbling in projects, yet I couldn't shake this concurrent feeling like I was out at sea; on one hand it felt pleasant and free, on the other I also felt directionless. Each day I would go to meetings or do little things here and there, always planning or exploring and not really doing or accomplishing much, and the whole time I would be aware of a fist tightening in the pit of my stomach, reminding me that this was somehow not it.
My life was telling me that I was stuck. I was bobbing along, and occasionally a wave would nudge me this way or that. But I was not taking control of where I wanted to go. It's funny reading what I wrote 2 months ago and realising that what felt like clarity then looks like chaos today. So much gets left out of the story when we are trying to make sense of things.
Then I woke up one morning, and from what remained of a dream, an image surfaced in my mind. I saw a camper van on a road trip across rural Japan. Partner, kids, 2 dogs.
On hindsight, I can rationalise how this happened. There had been a recent conversation with a friend, and just that night before I had read an article that made me realise the goal of my life is to find the right projects to build and nurture, whether it is family, my social circle, or the good I want to create in the world.
None of this made the image any less visceral. I lay in bed that morning smelling grass and rain and hand-ground coffee beans, daydreaming about endless driving.
Never mind that all of this was purely imaginary. It occurred to me that when I was younger I spent so much time looking for significance and an abstract inner knowing that I was living a life that mattered. As a result, I never quite knew what I was looking for.
This image, on the other hand, was real enough. And the only question I asked as I climbed out of bed that day was, "What do I need to do to make this happen?"
The thing about commitment is that it has to be specific.
You cannot simply commit to a direction, in the sense that you cannot commit to 'figuring out your life' or 'seeing what happens'. Instead, you have to commit to actions, responsibilities, defined areas of work, and it is in the process of pursuing these things and holding yourself accountable that you will figure out your life.
I recently shared a professional update on what this currently looks like for me, and I am very much still in the process of living out this path and refining it even as I am navigating it. But what was genuinely surprising was that as I committed in such a public way to what is now a much clearer vision of what I want my life to look like, I felt, for the first time, that I was finally taking myself seriously.
It's not that I've previously lacked seriousness. Rather, it's that I've become aware that for much of my life I have simply stumbled into things. Whether they were jobs, relationships, or life circumstances, many were decisions I had wandered into because they happened to be there and felt like the safest or easiest paths to take.
Some of these turned out to be wonderful, beautiful experiences. But just because they were good and important did not mean that I had always consciously chosen them.
I think that commitment is scary because we don't just commit to actions. We commit also to consequences, because by choosing a path to take we choose also the paths to sever ourselves from.
In a sense, life must narrow and shrink before it can expand. In order to enter a room, we must necessarily leave another and close the door behind us.
The thing is, we have to leave. Often, we don't do this; we just remain long enough to watch the room crumble around us, wondering what went wrong.
And this is what I realised: Sometimes I will refuse to make a decision despite having a hope or an expectation of a certain outcome. Yet when things don't go according to plan, I end up feeling wronged, like it was somehow unfair.
I realised that in order to be at peace with the outcome, regardless of whether it is the outcome I'm hoping for, I have to make a choice. It is in choosing and committing that we stand up for ourselves and the life we want to have. Ultimately, this is what matters.
When we resist choosing something, it is usually because we have a belief about how reality must work.
Often, it is a narrative about how we are not worthy of it, that we are ‘not ready’ or ‘not good enough’. Sometimes, it can be because we fear getting and then losing it, but this also comes back to the belief that if we lose this good thing then it would prove that we did not deserve it in the first place.
I've seen this many times in both myself and some of the individuals I work with.
A person will literally earn the job/opportunity/recognition they deserve, but because they believe they have somehow not ‘earned’ it, they continue to behave in ways that are constrained and timid.
I remember once saying to someone, "But it has already been given to you and you are already doing it. Everyday you go to work in this job that you always thought you deserved, yet you still behave as though you need permission to do what you think is right."
But what if we are already in possession of the lives we are meant to be living? And there is no longer a question about whether we are deserving?
What is the hard work we would now need to put in to live up to this responsibility? How would we make ourselves proud?
I saw the image of road trip and the camper van and the 2 dogs, and I asked myself these questions. As I began piecing together the answers, I saw a path emerge and I knew that I could not keep exploring and waiting. Instead, I had to commit—both to what would remain and what could not.
A note
A big thank you to all of you lovely people who subscribe to this newsletter. I took a bit of a break because I was figuring some stuff out—some of which I tried to capture in this week's issue.
I am truly grateful that none of you cancelled your paid subscriptions during this time, and in fact I've welcomed many new readers over the last 2 months. Hopefully, as things begin to connect and get clearer for me, I'll be back to publishing regularly again.
For now, some quick additional things:
I will be running a couple of upcoming events.
The first is a retreat in November that I’ve organised with some friends. Our focus is to help tired individuals move out of their thinking and feeling patterns, and get back in touch with their physical bodies. You can find out more about this here.
The second is a journalling workshop in around mid-October. Details are being finalised, but if you would be keen to attend something like this, drop me a note and I will personally drop you the sign-up link when we launch!
As I continue to pursue my professional certification in the Enneagram, I am looking to work with a small number of individuals on a 1-1 basis. If you are interested in exploring this with me or just curious about what it might entail, let me know.
That’s all for now, I’ll see you at the next one 👋🏻
I needed to read this today. Thank you 🫰🏻