abandoning all of the 'shoulds'

Daily writing prompt

What sacrifices have you made in life?

View all responses

I’m not sure if the above counts as a sacrifice…but these days, it certainly feels like one.

There’s a scene in Undone, where Alma, the main character, stares at two cans of black beans. Apparently, one can is better than the other and Alma proceeds to deem this thought as the most boring thought in the history of thoughts.

I should get the black beans that are better.

Relatedly, I wrote about a pair of leggings I’m reluctant to get rid of because it was the first time in my life I had bought an article of clothing without mine and everyone else’s demons breathing down my back. I bought them because I wanted them, simple as that.

But this thread of thought has taken YEARS to extend to other areas of my life.

When I stopped caring about the quality of clothing I wore, I naturally began to pick items of clothing I wear all the time. And every now and then, I discover that an item of clothing that made me want to jump up and down prior to inevitable purchase is of insanely good quality. Funny how that works.

When I stopped caring about the opinions of individuals in a corporate context, I stopped caring about work. But I didn’t know what to do next. When I stopped caring, I stopped reacting. I did the bare minimum. I did what was expected of me and fought to keep my mask on during meetings, forcing myself to stay in spaces that did not reflect my true state of being. It’s scary when you do things that probably are shiny, luxurious, innovative and exciting in nature. It’s scarier when you begin to realize that as much as these things are shiny, luxurious, innovative, and exciting in nature…it’s not enough, it’s not aligned, it’s me doing the thing everyone told me would make me happy and here I am, five minutes before a meeting, absorbing as much information as possible from a doc I was supposed to read a couple days ago, fighting to play my part as a hard worker dedicated to our mission. I knew I had to leave but I didn’t know how to go.

Nobody teaches you how to live in the unknown. Most, unless born to a family/community/environment with a healthy God-concept and spiritual practice, learn how to operate in the world of certainty.

If I work x number of years, I shall spend [the numbers of years I stay alive on this godforesaken Earth]-x, living my life in exactly the way I desire.

If I do [something that is similar to the thing that makes my soul sing but not exactly that thing], I can make money and eventually start living.

If I stay [in a place that is clearly no longer aligned with my being], I can [do thing that allocates a degree of certainty to my life] and cushion the fall when I inevitably have to leave and start living.

Because this is the natural order of things.

In astrology, there are certain placements that lend a degree of stability/power to an arbitrary individual’s life. This is a generalization and I imagine many professional astrologists would probably hate the fact that I’m characterizing exalted placements in this manner but these are the thoughts coming to me and they’re coming out in this way.

Much of the chaos that characterized my life since having graduated from college came about precisely because I don’t have any exalted placements in my chart. I don’t have a lot of debilitated placements, but I certainly am not like people with an insane amount of energy coursing through their being, able to sit down for hours at a time doing the thing that on some level they already know, is not aligned with their being. There are other circumstances in my life that led to this transformation that I’m not in the mood to divulge on the WWW–in conclusion, entropy a la debilitating psychosomatic symptoms begging me to start living more authentically was ultimately, a blessing.

I know many people who have multiple exalted placements in their charts, placements that lend to their beings an incredible amount of stamina and energy to see huge projects to their end, to achieve great feats, to get shit done. I used to envy them, when the demons of societal conditioning past still had power over me, still yelled at me for not having the energy to do as much as they could.

But now, I get that if you use exalted placements in your chart in a manner that is not conducive to your well-being, you are ultimately sucking your own soul of its vitality. Directing your resources to do the things you don’t actually want to do is a waste of your energy.

So, in a funny way, having been a low-energy human being for most of my life has saved me from more years of readings docs I was supposed to read a week ago, five minutes before a meeting.

Probably not a sacrifice in the conventional sense…but that’s why I write stuff on the WWW now, instead of telling people in everyday life why I have chosen to make the decisions I have. More often than not, when you tell people you’ve left everything that is supposed to guarantee x, y, and z, they look at you like you’re crazy. Not because they necessarily believe I actually am crazy, but because the amount of instability that comes with this territory feels menacing.

Something something I used to be this person anyway, happy Thursday :D.