What do we do when everything we know and hold dear collapses? When someone close to us dies, a relationship ends or a career suddenly comes to a halt, how do we come to terms with a potentially cataclysmic threat to our identity?
Perhaps we don't. Perhaps we are left flailing around with no firm anchor. This goes against the grain does it not? Society compels us to have our lives sorted and be the ones in control. To know who you are, where you are headed, what your goals are can seem an implicit part of being human and it is only when this begins to unravel and we fall into the great wordless, messiness of our lives that we can start to get a glimpse of the illusion that has been holding us together for so long.
Can we be open to the possibility that the void and emptiness we feel can offer us a gift? When the tendency is to desperately attempt to continue gripping onto the cliff edge in the form of moving onto another relationship, finding another career or losing ourselves in a new passion, what if we could take the opportunity to completely fall into our lives, feel the bubbling aliveness of our feelings and emotions.
We've spent our whole lives playing roles, performing to others and constantly finding activities to distract ourselves. Maybe the loss you are now experiencing is a great opportunity to be a little more gentle with yourself, to press the reset button and start to explore who you really are beyond the expectation you feel has been placed upon you.
The urge to make a decision for your next stage in life and to make sure everything is wrapped up is completely natural and in some ways there's no reason to not take tentative steps in this direction. But let's see if we can also hold some space for uncertainty and what it has to offer us. A chance to truly peer into our souls, to see what moves us and what has been holding us back.