I found myself at a standstill. On the one hand my life is good enough, I have no major complaints. I like my work, even if they pay me badly, and its organization leaves much to be desired. I have good friends on whom I can rely. On the other – sometimes I dream about some new adventure that waits for me just around the corner. Or just a better version of myself.
In such moments I start daydreaming and run far away from the place where I am now. I leave everything behind – my job, my town, my lifestyle, even my friends, and I throw myself into fantasizing about how great it would be to start all over again. Be an eccentric therapist in New York, who has a rich and sensitive partner, but who still keeps her independence. The problem is that I’m not a therapist, I was in New York once – passing by – and all I know about the city, I have learnt from beautiful and false vision from movies and TV series. I have met a wealthy and sensitive businessman, but I suspect that my image of him has the same basis as the vision of New York.
Let’s be honest – change in life is inevitable and necessary. The same time we are afraid of it and we desire. The only question is how should we think about the change?
For me, the most compelling metaphor is the one of searching the emergency exit in an airplane. You are asked to look around you, because the closest one may be just behind you. I guess the same goes with life – solution we are so desperately seeking for, may be just inches from us, just not where we intuitively seek it. When I search for an “emergency exits” from my current point in life, I tend to look only forward, into the future, where all things limiting me disappear. I do not want to remember about my past, which I clearly consider a burden. And although I basically agree with Marie Kondo’s principle to say goodbye to everything that anymore gives you happiness, I appreciate also the other of her rules – leave the few things that still sparkle some joy. I find it important to recognize the resources I have already established. They can be a vehicle for my own change. Not a violent one, but tailored to my needs.
I can agree that revolutionary changes are extremely appealing: one categorical step, cutting off from all the past and starting all over again. But hides a factor of destruction, rejection of myself. It means that everything that I have established so far, everything who I am, is not worth keeping. And this is not true.
I believe that the solution is always in me. It is worth to search inside for the things that once brought some joy to my life but at some point I have put them aside. And they disappeared from my sight now, but it does not mean that they ceased to be a part of me. They actually can be the key the stalemate. For some reason I have chosen them in the first place – those can be odd hobbies or points of interest, even things I still perform but mindlessly. Establishing those lost treasures can bring back the joy to my life. I just have to look carefully around and recognize hidden potential. The emergency exit, after all, may be just behind me, exactly where I am not looking for.
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