Life doesn't come with a map... but it does come with a compass

Like many of you, one of the primary objectives I have daily is ensuring how I show up is congruent with the behaviors, values and beliefs that I hold dear. On the surface, this seems easy enough except when I need to navigate through critical decisions that could manifest in unpopular outcomes or perceptions, forcing me to question whether my instinct or intended path is truly right. Despite having decades of life/work experience and evidence to draw from, this demon continues to surface and spread its rhetoric aimed at doing nothing other than securing a course that will lead to the top of Mount Paralysis.  

While I have introspected often and perused numerous books, I have found that, sometimes, in order to quell this incessant noise within, you have to release your hold on those things that provide ego-based validation and, instead, relinquish yourself to the promise of simplicity, power and spirituality that only nature can provide. A flower navigating its way through a crack in the concrete to find the sun or a spider rebuilding a home that was damaged by a storm are subtle reminders of that promise. However, in order to truly digest and internalize some teachings, we need more than nuance. In its most elevated and majestic form, the proof points associated with that covenant become so overwhelming that it saturates the normal senses and overflows into the very soul of the beholder; replacing ill-founded fears, uncertainties and ambiguity with confidence, clarity, peace and focus. I was privileged enough to receive this lesson first hand when on a recent trip to California. There, I was exposed to a paradox which revealed itself across two environments. From the deafening silence of a forest filled with giant Sequoias to the angry roar of a rocky shoreline ravaged by an incessant barrage of waves, they provided inescapable evidence of unapologetic fierceness, resilience and benevolence that is available to anyone humble enough and open enough to receive the gifts that it virtually begs them to accept. Here, I found myself coming to the same conclusion despite these settings being the sensory antithesis of each other…. how small we, and our material problems, are in the grand scheme of things but also, and more importantly, how interconnected our energy is to everything around us. Standing there, it was as if the collective experience of hundreds of thousands of years was immediately made available - screaming at me to surrender to their beauty and their wisdom. To say the it moved me would be an understatement… it “changed” me.

That interconnection is also a reminder of the impact that our supposed “smallness” can actually make. Just like waves that start with the tiniest of movement far off in the depths of the ocean and ultimately reshape a landscape or create countless grains of sand, the ripple that starts when we accept the role that each of us play when showing up in life with the proper energy and intention can effect the trajectory of everyone and everything we interact with. This is not saying we don’t need common-sense life skills or expertise but I am saying that we can create a much more profound lasting effect, if we accept the fact that our integrity, our confidence, our empathy, our instincts and our “walk” can serve as a much more reliable navigation tool and provide just as many teachable moments.