One of the greatest barriers to saying "no" to what I do not want has been the terrifying, wordless secret of not knowing what it may be that I do want. How to say no without first having something to which to say yes? For decades I have searched, becoming ever more fearful that there are no answers and that there is something "wrong" with me because I have no heart, no passion in a world full of the worthy and the beautiful; inside, I believed, was only emptiness.
The solicitous have acted as guides, attempting to set my feet on the paths of strategy and goals. I have sought meaning and purpose in everything from formal religion to hobbies to academic study and voluntary work. I have attempted to create identity through labels: labels of sexuality and spirituality and more. Always I have searched for a place within the external, strangely ambiguous, communally accepted loci of belonging.
And in the end? The answer, it seems, is simply to stop. To let go. To trust. In what shall I trust? In the emptiness? Or in the expansive and mysteriously wondrous embrace of the universe? Because the emptiness, it turns out, is astonishingly full of possibility. When I write, for example, I have no conception of where the words will carry me. I do not begin with an end of mind. Instead, my fingers simply itch to touch the keyboard and a word comes. Then, perhaps, another. And only if I have the courage to release conscious control entirely, does something happen. At that point, play steps in. Play and experimentation, true thought and possibility. Because it is only then, when I have released the need to understand and achieve, when I have abandoned the need to succeed, that I truly listen.
Years ago I learned that the true art of listening is to let go of any thought of destination. To not pause to consider what my response might be: I should be prepared to sit with the uncertainty about what might come next. Listen solely to understand, to be fully present, with no thought of future. To listen is to let the response take care of itself when that time comes.
But it did not occur to me that I must listen also to myself, and perhaps even more crucially, to the rhythms and song of the universe, to what wants to be.
And in the end, where do the decades of search lead? The anxious, desperate desire to say "no" to that which is most toxic to my soul, without knowing what alternative there may be, fearing that there is none?
For me, meaning and purpose are found in the moment. There is no possible preparation, no goal. No expectation or outcome. No external recognition, approbation, reward or motivator. No justification or product. There is only listening. Only the restless longing for play, experimentation and thought, and the openness to follow the unseen and unsuspected. The willingness to challenge the fear of heights and leap from the cliff, trusting the universe to catch me.