Moving forward

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

What is it that prevents us from leaping into each new adventure head-on?
If I invest myself in something, I may be hard-pressed to give up on it. But is moving forward the same as giving up? Must we release one thing to attain another?

Change is hard for a lot of us, perhaps because we are afraid to let go of the shore we find such comfort in - where we know where our feet are and know what comes before us. Embarking on a journey where the path and destination are unknown can be very unsettling - causing us anxiety, dread and then producing physical symptoms… But every moment we live we change, we adapt - we must be fluid, we must bend like trees in the wind or we wake to find we have snapped in half.

I have at times felt very much at sea - lost in a great expanse with no land in sight, beginning to think of the shore as a distant memory. But then I romanticize the sand, what it feels like between my toes with no memory of the sticking to my feet or coating my scalp. This selective memory serves to exaggerate the positives in an unrealistic manner, altering the reality of a situation in favor of a different version - one where we long to return to it even if it is unhealthy.

The unknown is a constant source of fear for most of us. Undiscovered, uncovered, unknown - one man's adventure is another man's nightmare.

Only by losing sight of the shore, by agreeing to free ourselves from the comfortable, from our expectations can we begin to discover who we are without the sand. We are not defined by the ground we stand upon.

We only have two feet. If we refuse to move one, we refuse to move at all. Even then, the water and sand will shift... Even if we refuse to change ourselves, the world will change around us. Let it go. Learn to be comfortable with discomfort. Then we may realize that we were never on the shore to begin with, we've always been seeking - never knowing which direction the path will take us.

With love,
M