The future is...postponed? Again?
Where did the leak happen in my ambition?
Every lockdown a piece of my brain dies. It’s the part of my brain that loves to plan. It’s the part that lights up at a to-do list and opens up a thousand tabs to plan a trip.
Three years ago I got a job as a founding teacher of a brand new school. I was so excited, teeming with ideas. There were so many things I had not been able to get off the ground at previous schools but now it seemed finally, brand new, fertile ground for creating the ultimate music program. I got a year of that particular stressful joy before the pandemic hit.
I’ve been beating myself up for feeling numb for the last year and a half. Wondering where the leak in my ambition happened. But it’s a pretty simple answer. Covid came and nuked our calendars. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the public health cause. But now, every time I make a plan I have to make a shadow plan of the event not happening. It’s taking a toll and I’m acknowledging that and I’m pretty sure acknowledging this in a Substack newsletter is one of the stages of grief.
I was struck by this episode of the podcast LifeKit: ‘The Importance of Mourning Losses (Even when they seem small)’. The grief expert Kenneth Doka was talking about the importance of acknowledging disenfranchised grief. He describes this as the grief of small things that are still losses in your life, even if they don’t seem “important” enough or have set grieving rituals sanctioned by society. I realised I’m not depressed and “wrong” - I’m moving through a stage of grief for the plans and dreams I had. Not just me though, I think everyone has had losses great and small throughout 2020/2021.
At uni I boarded with a family for a year. Nick, the father, used to say to me all the time: “You have to learn to live with open hands.” He was an advocate for radical generosity. Everything you have, you should be ready to give away (this once led me to giving half of my emergency money to a crying woman who was potentially a scammer on a train once, but he was proud of me doesn’t matter what the outcome is he said). Open hands might just refer to plans and dreams too. The generosity in return? Moving from a false sense of control to a return to attention to what and who is actually present around me right now at this very time.
So, I can’t do the plans. Gotta live with open hands. Learn again and again that it’s about doing what you can with what you have in front of you.
If you’re feeling this or have a friend who is also feeling this, forward this email to them!