I was once asked to admit that it was taking me rather a long time to figure out the path I wanted to take in life. In other words, it was taking too long.
I remember I felt so hurt by those words at the time. They really hit a very tender place. It felt like I was supposed to choose between being loved and accepted and being true to myself.
To the outside eye, it’s true that it probably looked like I was flitting aimlessly from one thing to the next. I’d left my corporate job in London and signed up to an eighteen week acting training, only to realise halfway through that, ‘this isn’t it!’.
But whilst it might have looked like I was veering wildly off track from a ‘good life’ to most people, and even though it probably even felt that way to me at times, what I was actually doing was following the threads of my heart.
We all play different roles here. We all have different preferences and we’re all born with different gifts.
Some of us are born to explore. To question and follow those questions no matter what. These questions can lead us into challenges and difficult times, but if you’re a born explorer-seeker-creator, you know as well as I do that no amount of money or security could convince you to live another way.
To be an explorer of this kind is not some kind of failed life. It is a valid life and it is a valuable life. We see things in ways others simply can’t, precisely because we’ve explored so deeply and had the courage to enter into difficult times to follow our explorations to their natural end.
We travelled right into our own darkness and discovered our innocence there. When we saw our own innocence, we saw everyone else’s innocence too and we remerged with a great gift of compassion.
We learned to offer the most grotesque parts of ourselves love and in doing so found an ability to hold others through their own shame and self-disgust.
We trudged on through our deepest despair to discover the most extraordinary beauty in the most ordinary of things.
We explore and we bring back the fruits of that exploration. That is what we do. And it is enough. It is more than enough. The path of your life that appears so ‘wrong’ to some is precisely the gift you’re heart-wired to bring. Trust it.
Love and courage,
Leah