Over the last few months, a sense of freedom and spontaneity has grown within me that has led to me finally embracing being single, seeing it as an opportunity to experience life in a new way and to thrive on spontaneity rather than yearn for stability.
This is a significant change for me and, as it is said often happens, the sense of an internal shift has been accompanied by changes in things that are happening around me. And you know what? It's bloody exciting.
Not knowing what might happen, not knowing what I will be spending my weekend doing but knowing that I have numerous options available to me, or to not plan anything at all and just see what I fancy and enjoy how the day pans out – I've been loving it.
In the early days of being single, this wouldn't have been possible, in fact, the thought of not having anything planned could feel pretty scary at times, offering the shadow of loneliness the opportunity to jump from its weekday hiding places to hitch a weekend joy(less)ride on my back.
Fear. So often with new situations, we are joined in our deliberation, hamstrung in making our choices, by fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of facing the pain that incessant activity can mask. Fear of being bored. Fear of wasting the time that we have.
Susan Jeffers tackled the issue of fear in her best-selling – and for many, life-changing – book, 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway'. In it, she identifies the root of all fear – the fear of not being able to cope. Whether that be with uncertainty, loneliness, failure…. whatever, beneath it all is the fear that we won't be able to cope.
Once we identify that and tackle it we are free; free to live freely and fearlessly, to face life on its terms and to adapt to our circumstances and thrive, regardless of what those circumstances may be. To become, as Bruce Lee said, 'like water'.
And in becoming like water we can luxuriate in life's new flavors – trying new things, visiting new places, meeting new people. Life becomes exciting, unpredictable, new. And as it does we become… Different.
"Maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen…"
(Tori Amos, Tear In Your Hand)
All of our new experiences, in new places, with new people, bring forth different parts of ourselves. Parts that may have previously existed but hibernated to accommodate to life with another, parts that were dulled and blunted and brought forth only in rare and exceptional circumstances, and parts that were always there but had never been revealed until the conditions were right for them to take to the stage and take a bow.
This, my friends, is a journey of discovery that life has booked for me, I don't know where I'm going but I'm looking forward to finding out; to the discoveries along the way, to the appearance of pieces of me that I've never seen.
Life, in all of its messy, majestic, mysterious beauty.
Strap in, let's ride.
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Originally published on Love, Laughter, Truth
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Photo by Kal Loftus on Unsplash
The post Pieces of Me You've Never Seen appeared first on The Good Men Project.
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