As I sit typing this blog; I notice on the right of me, my gratitude jar filled with post-its of all the daily joys I have been grateful for this year. And yet as we go forth towards the end of another year I can’t help but feel unfulfilled. Many people it seems are already waiting for the holidays and are in need of a break. Yet I sit here and feel desperate for the year not to end right now. Not in the next month. Maybe it’s because while so much has happened externally and to me; I myself have not done much. And when I say done much, I don’t mean the items we can tick off our list of goals. No; that never really ends does it? I mean in terms of inner growth; inner development; inner peace. Right now, as I sit here typing this I am feeling like I have taken a 100 steps back. And I recognise this lack of feeling. I see it. I hear it. And I sit with it.

But this time has to be different. This time there can be no rushing. There can be no reactions of the same. I must understand and learn whatever lesson I need to in order for my steps to move forward and no longer backwards. I remember once telling a colleague who  kept running away from every job she was in the minute it became uncomfortable, to wait and not react in the same way of pushing the uncomfortable away because it would keep returning until whatever she needed to learn had been learnt. And most importantly the learning is never about some external experience that we can read about on Google. It’s the learning of who you are and what you are able to endure and what you really want and what is true for you. We can say the same for whenever some hardship in life occurs to us; or some obstacle seems to crop up and we think, “this only happens to me.” Do we ever stop and think, “Why is this happening to me? What must I do differently this time so that the outcome is as it should be?”

So as I sit here I think about those 100 steps I’ve taken backwards and maybe the point is to return to this place until I find the path that’s right for me. Maybe that is the only reason. We return to this place because we keep going down the same, wrong path and we return because it’s an opportunity to try a different path, a path more true for us.

Here I am. 100 steps back. Not ready for the year to end. Not ready to choose another path. So I sit on the ground and survey all the paths in front of me and will sit in this place of indecision until the right path lights its way in front of me.
Remembering that I am the only one who can light the path.