unlearn everything
Love all of it. Unlearn everything.
The heart is a verb. Contracting and expanding on the brink of everything. Leaning into letting go, vast goodness, purpose. Plunging into the fear of what-about-me, a smaller tremble, scarcity. Unlearning then. Unlearning what I think I know, the noun of life. To let my heart be.
Love all of it. A vocabulary of sign posts may help:
Ambition: A contraction into separation. Striving. Climbing the fragile ladder of a story. Status. Ambition is human. Tribal. And lonely. Yet the me in the story feels safer. Because in chasing external recognition, I avoid the scarier task of accepting myself as I am, as things are, a more open heart that can get hurt.
Aspiration feels larger. Edges soften. A yearning into connection. An entering into contribution. Engaged. Yet, still a loneliness. Because I aspire toward something that is not here yet. Our work for a better world flows from this. As does art, great poetry. Leaning into purpose, goodness. So human as well. A necessary pull.
Unlearning: No small task. The thing is, as long as I think I can make things right, want to fix, heal, help anything at all, on my own or together, I risk feeding this fickle world the noun of a desired outcome, a control. Nothing wrong with this either, and it can also hurt.
"Pay close attention and listen without judgement for once. Have no answers," Derek Sivers writes.* Unlearning. Letting go. Humility.
Kindness. Another view. Just being here. What might it be like to see the world as a dance of verbs only? To be for what is, ever changing, fully in love?
(Wait! Stop! We do need a better world!)
Thing is, reality is what is. Nothing to be realized later on. Active, actual. But for our thoughts tricking us. It is only from this acceptance that I can make things better. The amazing thing: With this landing, this rock-bottom nowhere to go but here, I can pick myself up and be effective for a better world. Fully in love also with what is possible and yet perhaps beyond aspiration. Because I am here, unfolding verbs. A relief.
What led to this post:
Tenderness. A drinking from light. My actions my legacy. I wrote this because my heart really did plunge a week or so ago. Stuck. I felt I had nowhere to go, fought it hard at first. But being here.
*Then Derek Sivers' post came in. Read Cross the world four times, here.
Rumi as well: “Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”
A question: How do you read the signposts of ambition, aspiration, and beyond? What is it that you want to unlearn? Write to me, or ask me questions? It helps all of us.
Thank you for reading this! When you become part of my email group, you’ll receive additional thoughts and prompts, alongside invitations to fun, rebellious challenges that always lean into happiness and effectiveness.
