‘All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience’ – Henry Miller
A blog post over at the ever-thought provoking, MakeItUltra, ignited my inspiration a few days ago, the way something does when you find it’s fallen into your own stride and walks beside you.
“Hey there! I see you’re thinking what I’m thinking! Let’s get stuck into this!”
If you’ve not read it yet, the post describes the ‘leap of hope’ we need to take in order to grow, but which we are often afraid to take for risk of the unknown, and asks how we know when to take the leap.
Let’s just say that this brief original post has led me to start writing this response at least three times as it seems to spill over to all areas of life and many, many tangents!
I’ll preface by saying that I believe that a leap into the unknown is always a hugely liberating thing. Landing, on the other hand, well, results may vary, although it’s always worth the lesson. I’m not saying I follow this all of the time, or that I have it all figured out, but I am trying to be conscious of the processes that take me closer (or further) from where I want to be, so I thought I’d share my perspective in case someone might read it and find it useful.
So here is my take, my response, the continuation of the conversation.
Uncertainty can be a heavy burden, weighing us down so we feel that we can’t take the first step forward…but conveniently there are small leaps of hope as well as large leaps, and we can start small. When you’re facing them head on, even the small ones can feel inflated, and that’s ok. The more practice you have in stepping into the unknown, the more your confidence grows to do so.
I think the confidence grows from listening to ourselves and acting on our hearts desires. This can be tricky in itself because other things like to show up dressed as Heart and it’s not always easy to tell at first. Your ego might come dressed as your heart, and tell you to do destructive things like burn bridges with people who haven’t lived up to your expectations… or your insecurity might try the heart voice on, and make you do something risky for outside approval, which never ends well… But your heart is the one you want to listen to. It might say something quiet but sure, something that holds no malice towards anyone else, and something that feels like truth to you.
If you hear it, it might make an exciting suggestion that gets your heart racing. But the beat can soon be dampened with excuses and fears, and this is where fear of the unknown holds you hostage…
The illogical thing about fearing the unknown (or telling yourself that you do, in fact, know what happens tomorrow if you were to do something different), is that the things that scare us most are things that may never even happen.
And yet, we sit paralysed in our current situation, the same one that causes our heart to scream out for change in the first place… The irony is that we know what happens in this place. It happened already yesterday, and last week, and last month, and last year, maybe for years now. It’s the known that we should fear and try to avoid, if we know we are unfulfilled there… because if we stay put, we know what will happen tomorrow; we will sit and wonder why we never unlocked the potential we feel is shimmering within us…
This post was going to be about art practice, so I better get to that bit.
I am working on a series of paintings. It’s going reasonably well, and when I came across the original post on this topic, I had just gone through an interesting process of wiping the last 5 hours of work off one of my canvases to dare start again. This is not something I’d normally do, but I had been thinking about courage; the courage to face a challenge, but also know when enough is enough. I could tell this painting wasn’t working out for various reasons, so I committed to going back a few steps and losing half a days’ work. It was risky because I’d lost time and I didn’t know where to go next or if I could salvage the thing. But I had the experience to know that I’d *probably* be able to get *something* even slightly better down. And I trusted myself that either I’d have an even better idea, would learn something, or that I wouldn’t punish myself if I failed this time. This trust comes with some experience in my practice, but it’s also a choice. And often I find that I trust my decision making more than I’m comfortable with- most of my decisions are made from my gut, from my instinct and intuition (I guess you could call this my heart). And I often have some reservations about that approach as I’m still getting used to it, but it’s also the only one that seems to pay off reasonably consistently. So I choose to put the doubt aside and take a risk. This time it paid off- the painting came to life in ways I couldn’t have imagined had I continued down the path I’d planned on. Phew. Somewhat small risk, but good practice for future risk taking. And it’s given me more confidence in my painting.
So let’s take a bigger leap, lets get personal.
I wrote a poem about this earlier in the year. The leap of hope I talked about in it was to do with trusting myself to trust others after having lacked trust in a close relationship for a long time.
Learning to trust was painful and scary at first, but I found that the more I listened to my gut, the better I got at knowing who to trust. And I think trusting others is a big leap, especially when you trust them in your vulnerability and your emotional and physical safety. You wont always get it right, but each time you do is remarkably rewarding.
These are both small and big leaps of hope that lead to rewarding places.
It’s easy to overlook some basic truths about reaching for your dreams or getting to where you’d rather be. The truth is that it’s terrifying for many reasons- that’s what keeps so many of us trapped in mediocrity. But maybe we can give it a go, strap on some wings, look like a stupid bird creature, and take a leap? If you struggle and are scared, if you face set backs but have a hunch that you’re on the right track, remember that if achieving your dreams was easy, everyone would be doing it. And, sadly, they sure as hell aren’t.
I’ve sat silent in this house all day, long enough to begin to hear my voice.
isthebeervegan 