a letter from my future self on valentines day

Dear self,

You may not know it right now, but you are doing important things. I know, it may feel like somehow you got on the wrong bus, or that you are being mistaken for someone else with different skills and different goals than the ones you imagine you have, but in reality, you are learning in every moment, learning things that will help you take yourself where you need to go.

You are learning that you will need to take yourself, that there is no express ride, no fairy godmother, no magic wormhole, no wood sprite, or fog-thick fantasy where you will wander in lost, and wander out found.

You are learning how to listen differently, to yourself and others. You are learning how to speak and when not to. You are learning to watch for bigger patterns and not just respond to minutiae.  You are learning flexibility and strength. You are learning how important it is to say no, and how freeing it can be to say yes, and how shitty it is when you say yes too soon, or no simply out of fear.  You are learning how to be new at something, how to suck at it, how to be open to not knowing.

You are learning to love in a wide open way that you have never experienced before. You are learning to trust, to lean into, to count on... you are learning that being scared about being interdependent does not mean you can pretend and not do it. You've already found yourself out, and realized in spite of fear, you're in it too. That although you've already learned, you already know you would probably survive, you cannot imagine going back to just you.

You are learning to listen to your body, to the signals that come quietly before the shouts, the jammed gears, the smoking clutch.  You are learning that you need to take a different kind of care, and that requires a different kind of time, and a different kind of time means a different kind of allowance... you need to make room for taking care.  It cannot be interstitial.  It has to be as important as it is.

You are learning a lot about what you don't like, and a lot about what you do.  You are learning to pay attention to energy shifts and balances, what brings energy, what saps it. You've already made a huge leap this year into awareness of the cost of self inflicted conflict. That each moment needs to have clarity of attention and that split attention is acutely and nearly instantaneously depleting.

You are learning about the skills you have that are independent of field. The ones that just are-- the katestuff that you may be able to reframe into a useful package to help feed your family and your self.

You are learning so many things that are laying groundwork. You may not know for what yet, and that is ok. You are learning, in fact, that not knowing is ok. That you can feel your way towards whatever is next, and have faith that somehow all the pieces you are collecting, all of the yeses and the Yeses and the YESes will amount to something tangible and satisfying and real.  That your gifts will be useful and helpful and of the kind of value you may not be able to imagine just now.

You are learning to imagine an energized life, one with confidence and quiet joy. You are learning to imagine how active a roll you will need to take in avoiding the leg traps of old behaviors that keep you small, keep you quiet, keep you wounded.

You are learning to stop and look, stop and think, stop and listen. Remembering things you knew, and then unknew.

You are learning, I know it feels you are learning too slowly, or in a way that feels circuitous and non-linear, but you are learning what it takes to feel good. And you are remembering, not always and not easily, but you are remembering pieces you've put aside or away.

A few years from now, your landscape will be different. It will be more gentle and less thorny. You will be able to see a little farther,  and have more faith when the fog comes in that it is simply time to reconnect, gather in, re-imagine and reaffirm.  You will be stronger than you think. You are now, but you can't quite know that.  You'll see though, and it will simply be true.

You will realize how much there is in every moment that can be used for bliss. You are realizing this, but you forget and re-remember. You will forget and re-remember a million million times.

But this I know, this you know: you were made for joy. You feel it in everything when you can. There is nothing quite like fireflies or snowflakes or the moon. There is nothing like chocolate or the right shoulder, or clean sheets or hot showers.  There is nothing like lying on the floor and feeling that sort of connected with whatever that earth energy is that holds us just strongly enough so we don't fall off.

You will learn to reconnect more easily.  Have faith that you will.
and I'll be waiting here to welcome you.  We'll have fun, I promise.

with love, and more appreciation that you can know for all that you are doing, and all that you are being and all that you are becoming. Without you there would be no me.

Namaste
your future self