Inertia of Progress

January was a very busy month for me. I was all over the place – activities, events, book launches, school meets, projects and deliverables, teaching classes… you name it, I was in it. In February, I chose to work on some goals and set the intention to pull back, but I still noticed that I was spreading myself out too thin – doing multiple things and perhaps over committing. By mid-February, I was exhausted – physically, mentally and emotionally. So by the last week of February, I chose to honor that need and rest. But here’s what happened when I rested: I started questioning myself – What was I doing? Where was all this activity leading to?

I guess I was looking for a focus as a sense of validation for my actions and it was annoying – this sense of frustration. In a way, there was an urgency, an inexplicable sense of time running out.

I seemed to be looking for a progress report, of sorts, hoping for a linear graph indicating an upward and forward movement – determining my progress towards a goal.

In other words, I was creating and living my self-definition of progress in terms of movement … with respect to time – my own physics formula for progress.

That frustration was compounded by the observation that in my constant blur of activity, I was wondering if I was even making any progress at all, or simply running around in circles – creating a frenzied nothing!

It was deeply unsettling, because I knew I was doing things I believed in, I knew my work was meaningful, yet, what was this inner turmoil that was creeping in? Self doubt? or was in my saboteur gnawing away at my self-esteem?

It almost felt like a waste of time or …wait for it…

…failure!!!

So during this week of pause and pulling back and withdrawing from all the doing and stepping into some much-needed being, I allowed myself to mull over this frustrating funk. And it was during my morning introspective self-talk time when the thought gently unfurled itself.

But it is movement.

I knew I had hit upon something significant, so instead of jumping excitedly upon the whisper of a thought, I allowed it to swirl around in my head as it gathered enough substance to turn louder and clearer.

This is what emerged:

Moving around in circles is still movement – taking one step at a time based on a set of choices available at that point in time. Oftentimes, those choices were unpredictable, yet, they arrived and were acted upon. And with every choice that is made, something shifts – a new probability allows for new possibilities and opportunities – again opening up the door, or window, to more choices that make up the next step.

This movement, or stepping into choices, as I would now call it, was not linear with respect to time, but as non-linear as how life’s ups and downs. The choices we step into are often challenged and defined by linear time, or non-linear emotions and multi-linear paradigms and conditioning. Attempting to sort them into a linear progression with a defined outcome was bound to result in frustrating confusion or confusing frustration – again, the choice is one’s own to make!

So then, I moved in to question what progress had I made if I’d actually only been moving around in circles!

The answer again, was clear enough and simple – at least to me. Even in those relative circles of stepping into choices, our options and what we opted eventually were governed by and defined what our purpose or dharma was leading us to choose.

I’m leaning in to say that consciously or subconsciously, our choices are based on a dharma that we are set to meet. Some of us are aware of the steps we choose and why, others often wonder what on Earth caused to choose they they did – if things turned out favourable, we would say “All’s well that ends well”, if they ended up with a setback, we would find a way to curse destiny and wonder if after all the effort, we ended up ‘back to square one’.

So here is where I mumbled my query on stagnation – because that is a possibility or a fear when the frenetic phase of activity, albeit on purpose, doesn’t open up the doors of clarity. The questions,

Where is the finish line? The successful completion certificate? Am I moving at all??

Guess what? There is growth, creation and progress even in stagnation! Algae and mosses grow in stagnant ponds and puddles – yeah, even nasty bugs grow there…  but polarity aside, growth happens in every state of motion – from stagnant, static, inertia to the kinetic speed of a bullet. Stagnation seems static, but even in festering conditions, something shifts.

Bottom line – holding the intention and vision of where I wanted to go and embracing the uncertainty – one conscious step at a time – doing and being the best that I possibly can at the given moment…

Progress was inevitable.

Both, activity and pause are incumbent to growth and progress. The choice of momentum is ours to make. There is learning and creation even in the perception of failure.

So at the end of it all, here’s what I did. I chose to rest and pause. I drew, painted, practiced my brush lettering, beautified my bullet journal and allowed myself to sink in and be – nothing too fancy, to be honest, I just slowed down and allowed myself to take one step after another, trusting that when faced with a situation, the choices would appear and with those choices, the path ahead would follow suit.

Of Choices & Opinions

Earlier this week India lost a prominent political leader. Days later, Facebook & Whatsapp was rife with memes and forwards about her life – both political as well as personal. We see celebrity gossip all the time – gossip that feeds media and the ratings, gossip that feeds lunch hour employees and gossip that feeds the conversation pools of those whiling away time with these silence-fillers.

I know because I’m sure I have engaged in something  similar at some time or the other, but a few days ago, in the wake of grief at the loss of a powerful woman, I was astounded at the topics that were being so callously shared across private groups – most of them ruthless forwards that were obviously untrue – images of palatial rooms inside the deceased’s  home, irrelevant images of the hospital staff (Japanese doctors in masks that also were the subjects of a previous forwards some years ago) and worse, an old media story about an illegitimate child and the controversy of personal & private relationships.

So I stopped for a moment just to ponder about why it felt so wrong to me on a personal level. Without adding tags to ‘who’ we were talking about, I just felt that dissecting someone else’s life gave most people the liberty to relieve themselves of dissecting their own issues. I mean, how many of us would even take that path? The path of introspection and analyzing our own sh*t?

And we ALL have enough sh*t to think about – but it somehow makes us feel ‘better’ or ‘worthy’ enough to talk about, reproach and condemn someone else’s choices.

Choices – now that’s a biggie! Our whole lives are spent justifying our choices saying that is what we were left with when we took our pick and in ‘retrospect’ we may choose differently. But that choice, by the sound of all these controversies being populated, seems to be only our own individual right. When questioned, we have the ‘right’ to ask others to butt out and mind their own business, but when it comes to others’ choices, our opinions, judgments and condemnations are free to dispense!

Are we so pure and perfect that we allow ourselves to disregard other people’s choices and their circumstances when they made them?  If it affects a larger population, maybe so, but if it is a personal choice….?

Image credit: https://www.mormonwiki.com/wiki/images/3/3d/Judging_Others.png