Today, I thought about the future.

    What is there to see and do and look forward to while you’re stuck staring at the ceiling? I just spent the last two weeks mostly in bed while I was recovering from some circumstances outside of my control. I emerged periodically for a Zoom meeting, a family meal, a funeral, and then collapsed back in bed.

    “Circumstances beyond my control.” That’s an odd phrase. Isn’t everything outside of my control? Have I ever been in control? I wonder — how can I structure a life in which I allow time to adapt to whatever the future brings me? What would it look like to float, to become unmoored from all my preconceived ideas of what my life should be?

Unmoored

    I took a workshop last autumn with Jori Martinez Woods and Amanda Roche through Art and Soul called “Discovering Your Inner Jellyfish: Finding Peace in Groundlessness.” It gave me a novel framework to better comprehend my life as one who has been uprooted from everything I have used to define myself. I am slowly evolving to the point where I no longer rummage desperately for strict definitions to give my life meaning. Instead, I am learning to discern my humanity more clearly, becoming nothing more or less than a living being who advances wherever growth takes me. Who recalls the lessons I need to learn, disregards what I need to forget, and accepts grace when I neglect what I should have remembered.

    As I think about new ways to move through time, I also imagine better ways to live through space. I have often tried to jam myself into confining expectations, edit myself beyond recognition, and even starve myself to fit an ideal. I am now meditating on the idea that I could allow my soul to fill my body with fullness until I’m overflowing. I take up all the space my body requires. I want to craft a life that fits me as gracefully as well-tailored pants.

Milestones

    I turned 40 last year. So strange facing such a milestone in a pandemic, as we process life and death and all in between. As we age, it becomes too easy to avoid learning new things. We encounter so much newness in both mundane and profound events. It takes hope to be brave enough to learn something new; my reserves of hope have been low. It feels easier to shrink back and avoid learning, to assume that loss is all I have left to experience. Then I remember that I am allowing myself ample space and time, and tentatively, I become a beginner again.

    It’s been a while since I have written. One of the reasons is that I haven’t had the physical energy to type. (Being disabled in a pandemic has not been one of my favorite things, by the way.) Today, I am trying out a new process for me — drafting this blog post with speech-to-text. It’s an entirely unfamiliar way for my brain to capture thoughts. I feel so silly talking to myself. And I love getting submerged in the depths of my creativity, beyond where my inner editor can swim, as I type out my stream-of-consciousness. But I still have stories to tell and people to meet. My limitations need to be addressed and accommodated rather than ignored; it is an opportunity to grow and evolve.

    Change is necessary and inescapable, and I refuse to allow myself to grow stale. Grief has shaped this year for me. But I still breathe; there is life yet for me to live, however long or short it might be.

    There are so many unknowns. I have no idea what the future holds. I have no idea how long I will need to wear a mask in public. I don’t know how effective the vaccine is for immunocompromised people. I don’t know what my career might look like. I don’t know who will still be with us when I turn 41.

    What do I know? My relationships with my family, my community, my world, my traditions, myself.

    Today, I am thinking about the future.