The Precipice and Library of Life

Pushed to the edge of your life, you think you have no choice. Peering down into the dirt-brown maw of a life lived juicelessly, you presume you must step down and into the sleep-induced hole of living others’ expectations and your own stolid safety. About to step into a forgetting from which there is no return, you hear a voice; a voice from long ago, a voice so quiet you’re not sure you heard anything. But you did. You’re sure of it. This ancient, soundless voice asks you to simply stop and reconsider. It reminds you that you have a choice; many choices. It reminds you that you chose to forget you had choices for, in forgetting, there is no blame, no judgement and no risk. There is the death of your soul but that, too, is allowed to die from your remembering.

This voice, this simple stillness, asks you to stop, back up a little and go to the deepest part of you; a place you’ve avoided since your first childhood experience of rejection. As you reach through the cobwebs and dust into that sacred cave you’ve pretended wasn’t there, the size of your choices loom out of the darkness like an ocean liner to a canoeist in the night; silent, massive and awe inspiring. And threatening.

But your voice counsels calmness and it breathes into you as that silently approaching hulk slows, dissolves and leaves, around you, empty space.

There you stand at the crossroads that were, just a moment before, a one-way descent into a despair that you’d made to look okay and bearable. But now it’s neither okay nor bearable and it’s nothing but despair; a despair that can, now, be ground into the dust as you walk gracefully on by. But will you?

As you falter at the edge you find the courage to turn around and actually look at what you’ve left behind. Yes, there is the dust storm of a life in turmoil, in uncertainty and beyond the expectations of a younger you. But you hold to your steely heart and you continue to gaze through the dust of a mess kicked up and you begin to see more than just turmoil and broken promises to yourself. As you hold your gaze the gaps appear in the swirling haze and you realise there’s something behind the turmoil you created. You look down and find that your feet are moving towards that fury of dust, through it and the clarity behind it is a picture of a life you left behind – a thousand unread books, a hundred unpresented cheques, fifty rejected invitations and countless opportunities denied or unnoticed from every corner of your life.

As you observe and allow your mind to settle, the dust settles and you straighten your hair, pat the dust off and rub your eyes as you realise the tempest came not from the world around you but from the world in you. You’d kicked up the dust trying to resist your dreams, your destiny and your soul’s calling.

The anger, bitterness and disappointment that drove you to the sad little edge of defeat came not from others but from your own self-created expectations that had no chance of consummation. As your loud and frightened little ego thrashed about in fermenting its tiny goals of littleness, your quietly supportive soul-urge was left in the dust to wither and dry up.
But it never dies. It is always there, beckoning you back to a simpler, grander and more nurturing future that you have no choice about … and, when you relax and smile about it, you don’t actually want a choice about.

You have fought with inevitability and you almost won. You almost gave up a life of juice for a life of barren emptiness. And then you gave up, gave in and started to listen to a voice so long denied.

As you step up to the bookcase of a thousand unread books and to a hundred unfulfilled promises (cheques) to yourself, you can justifiably feel ashamed and disappointed that you’ve left your best work, your best life and your best opportunities behind on dusty, untouched shelves.

But your wee voice counsels quietitude. Hush the bitterness and shame of chances lost and callings avoided. That’s all past and now is now. There is no other moment than this present one, this one right here and now. The past we can learn from but we must release it if we’re to move on. Drag it along with the chains and ropes of regret and bitterness and you’ll have nought but what you’re dragging forever after into a dry and remorseless future.

However, you might just thank it and appreciate its lessons. Doing this is forgiveness for a past unlived and it releases those rusty chains and chafing ropes; it frees you to start again in a new space of certainties – certainties of the inevitably you’ve been fighting to date. Now is the time to change sides and fight for (not against) your sweetest destiny.

You’re now ready to listen to that sweet, quiet little voice. Shhhh …. just listen. Now. Listen and smile.

More writings at https://pjbradbury.wordpress.com/