When it comes to trying something completely new, there’s usually a push. It comes from somewhere deep inside. If it feels beautiful, one might describe it as inspiration. If it feels as though someone took an industrial-sized vacuum to your insides, it might be described as desperation. When I first decided to create The Heart Post, it wasn’t inspiration.
There was an awkward silence on the day I got pushed – but I rarely minded silence. It’s better than talking when there is nothing to say. I enjoy getting lost in my thoughts and watching others get lost in theirs. But yesterday, or at least that particular yesterday, was different. That silence wasn’t golden. I wasn’t pausing to listen or to feel or to breathe. I wasn’t lost in my thoughts.
I was just lost.
Not all of me was lost. There was the wife, the mom, the daughter. They were there. My body was there. The dishes I washed, check. The laundry I folded, check. The millionth time I’d cleaned the basement and kids’ bedrooms, check. My smile, check. They were all there.
What exactly was missing? I tried to speak again but all of the inspiration in my mind couldn’t move beyond the basement of my brain – disconnected concepts, butterflies with only one wing, angels with ankles of lead, and despite my penchant for nature and spirituality rather than mechanics, there was even an airplane with only one sputtering engine. Not a single thought could get off the ground, into action or powered by my voice.
And that’s when I realized silence isn’t always golden and sometimes it’s much worse than awkward. Sometimes it means you don’t know who are anymore, you don’t know what you want anymore and you can’t find a single thought that is yours anymore. Honestly, I’m not a huge Julia Robert’s romantic movie fan, but that scene in the Run Away Bride, the one where she has no idea what kind of eggs she likes, came to mind. When I first saw the movie, I thought it was ridiculous, but years later, I was starting to relate.
It didn’t take me long to decide that I wasn’t waiting for my prince charming to force me to choose off the breakfast menu. I’ll take my eggs soft-boiled on toast with a side of unfettered self-expression.
This blog was the first step to finding my voice again. I spent over month preparing the Facebook page and the website. By the time it was published, I no longer felt the same desperation as I did that day when butterflies couldn’t fly and angels wore shackles in my mind. With a little work, and a lot of time hiding in my cocoon, desperation metamorphasized into inspiration.
If the desperation faded, why share this story with you now? Because the importance of accepting our phases in life, the ups, the downs, the days when the brilliance of our productivity feels like it outshines the historical leaps and bounds of the printing press and the days when getting out of bed feels as monumental a task as moving a printing press, will be a theme that resurfaces here at The Heart Post. There is a false promise out there that if we do everything right, we will always be happy, and if we are worthy employees, we will always be 110% productive, always. It’s just not possible. But if we recognize our own cycles, if we know that laying low today will allow us to fly high tomorrow, then we can pause, breathe and love ourselves, even during the awkward silence.
The Heart Post 