Getting Stuck

It is time to honour the great human endeavour of getting stuck. We all do it, and flagellate ourselves for it, no doubt. Beat up on ourselves for repeating some hamster-wheel thinking pattern. For being unable to simply let things go. Move on.

I think this habit of returning to the past might have something to do with being fearful of the unknown. What lies ahead in all it's mist and mystery. We can set a blind bearing into the fog, but we don't have a chart, or even if we do it does not accurately show time or distance. And then we are out there floating. If we're lucky we are following a true bearing. Some direction told to us by the still quiet voice of the soul.

It demands a lot of trust. Navigating in fog is profoundly disorienting, and if you don't trust the compass you will end up paddling in circles, or out to sea; wherever the current decides to take you.

It can be discouraging, exposing, so sometimes we simply return to shore, back to where we started to wait it out. Waiting for the fog to clear maybe. There is safety here, on this known shoreline, regardless of how lonely or lost we might have become here. We can explore it's familiar topography, dig our toes into the sand of it's beaches or sit with our backs to the sea. It is reassuring because it is known, though we may have already walked every inch of it, waded in every stream and and touched every tree. Rooted and re-rooted in the dirt of the interior. Turned it all inside out again and again. But no matter how long we stay here, or how many times we return, it is unlikely to show us the answers to the questions we are asking. If those answers exist, they are somewhere out to sea, beyond or perhaps hidden within the fog bank. Or perhaps only seen from some vantage point far off land.

In the meantime there is no shame in getting stuck, returning to the shore to check again. Looking perhaps under some unturned rock or shell.  That is the way of things until we are truly ready to leave the beach.