Allow me a moment of introspection

Because it proves we’re in this together.

I’ve just found a note I wrote when I was 61, in preparation for a therapy session.

It reads:

‘I am frustrated, sometimes, by people who are self-contained, self-assured, certain and settled in their approach to life. I feel like I’m always in flux and that if I stop being so, I will become fixed, dull, dulled.’

Being in flux was a mixed blessing at that point in my life, when I’d experienced great personal upheaval and was about to create more by leaving my job. I felt at odds with, and perhaps both inferior to and resentful of, those people I saw as confident and steady.

Now that I spend all of my time thinking about these things from a coaching perspective –  and have had umpteen conversations about them with others – I look at it differently.

Now I know that appearances can be deceptive. People see me as self-contained and self-assured – I know because they tell me so. Perhaps I’m more that way than I think. And perhaps I’m good at disguising it when I’m not.

Yes, I’m still frustrated by those people who appear to be like that, mostly because they express – or I infer – a challenge to my way of being. The ‘be more like me’ people. The ‘what you should do’ people. The ‘what I found’ people. The ‘why don’t you?’ people.

But I do feel more positive about being in flux and I’d say that, on balance, it’s more good than bad. 

And I will keep being open about being in flux, particularly in the face of individual or societal expectations that I should be settling down in some way at my age, preferably a long way from work and probably on a cruise ship.

Because I’m thinking, right this minute as I type this, that I’m working on an exciting project and if I keep at it, get it done, not only will that be a good thing in itself, but it will clear the way for the next thing. I don’t know what that next thing is yet, and I don’t need or even want to know. I just need to know that there is a next thing. And that it’s up to me to choose it, even if it doesn’t align with anything I’ve done before.

So maybe I’m self-assured about being in flux?

Being in flux can feel uncomfortable, but at least you know you’re alive, you’re moving, there’s potential, and you might alight somewhere different. And that place might be rewarding and enhancing in ways you couldn’t have anticipated.

Photo: Glitch Lab App on Unsplash