I have been struggling with so many unknowns recently, feeling so unsettled. I was just reading while my daughter napped, but not really able to focus because of these worries floating around in my head, so I opened my window shade.
I saw a girl swinging in the yard next door out my bedroom window. I saw a girl swinging so high and free that I stopped breathing for a moment. It literally shocked the breath out of me as I realized at once: You are already everything.
The secret is that everything you ever needed to know, all the power you ever wanted, you already have. Isn’t it amazing, that as soon as we are born, we are already everything? We are nothing, as in not yet shaped, but we are also already everything, as in the magic and power and beauty of humanity is instantly and tremendously inside each and every one of us.
That is why before I knew it, I was half crying, half laughing watching this little girl swing high and free because she is me and she is you. The greatest teacher we will ever, ever know has already been inside of us, if we can just remember.
If you don’t believe me, talk to a three-year-old. The wisdom is at once startling, obvious and infinite.
That is why I keep coming back to this thought: “time is not linear.” What I mean is that right now, we can learn from ourselves at a much, much younger age, if we can re-access that part of ourselves.
Isn’t it fantastic though, that she’s there already, waiting for us to come back and say hello? And suddenly the struggles that I am facing today seem a little less daunting as I realize how cyclical life is and how there is no right or wrong, only learning and changing or closing down and trying to stay linear (I don’t recommend).
What I mean by staying linear is refusing to accept that yes you may be 32 but you are also 2 and 13 and 21; you are not just one stagnant thing, you are everything you have ever been at this one moment in time.
So my advice is do what you were born to do: play and learn and evolve and if you can, keep yourself open to the magic of who you are, who you already have been and who you were meant to be (spoiler alert: I’m becoming more and more certain they’re one and the same.)