As Jesse tries her very best to settle into this next major phase of her Life's adventure, I'm happy to be ablt to chat to her regularly, and share deeply in her process. This morning I wanted to say these words to her..."Take Baby Steps". Don't force yourself or expect yourself to get everything perfect immediately. Looking at this picture now, (Gosh, she was so delightful), I also have a feeling that in fact taking 'baby steps', may not really be a very tender, peaceful or safe experience. It often involves bumping into furniture, and falling over just before you get where you were heading. It must feel utterly tenuous and frightening in those first moments, as you lift one foot and before you know where and how it's going to land. In fact it's damn scary, and sometimes you have to just surrender to the momentum until you either reach the other side of the garden, or fall over the dog on the way. Yet somehow, most of us manage it and in somecases become somewhat addicted to the feeling of being upright and in motion.So, take baby steps. It may not be graceful. It may frighten the hell out of you. But with enough practice, and maybe a couple of lapses where you have to allow yourself to crawl across the floor if you need to, you'll eventually get the Art of it. And who knows, you could land up dancing in your grandmothers bedjacket.
I'm posting the following piece of writing because I think it's brilliant. One of the 'secrets' I saw on the 'secretpost' blog, was from someone who takes a book from his private collection every week, goes to the park, reads his favourite passage from the book, then wraps it and leaves it for someone else to find. What I love about this idea, is that it also affords him the opportunity to reconnect with a gem in each book. I usually look for the 'Gem' moment in movies. And also the 'Gem' passages in books I love. I actually hated the book 'Life of Pi', by YannMartel, but as I waded through it, I found this on page 161. Brilliant.
"I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
