Letting the lover be

I spent some hours tinkering with this blog again, fixing what I thought needed fixing. I'm reminded of that story about Walt Whitman, and how he just kept working on Leaves of Grass even after it was published, polishing it to death. While this blog is no literary masterpiece, I find myself always wanting to tweak it, as if somehow tweaking it would tell a better story of my life, and my past, present, and future would actually be better for it.

I know it won't be, because life is what it is no matter how organized my blog is, but I'm always happy to organize and re-organize, so I'm letting my slightly neurotic self be!

That's one thing I'm learning in my mid-30s, just to let myself be.

At present, letting myself be means giving myself space to be a little confused about where to go next in my life.

I don't know when I started second-guessing myself. Entering college, I was, like many of my batchmates, uncertain of how the future would unfold, but I was so sure of what I wanted for myself. I couldn't relate with friends who weren't clear on what they wanted. This confusion I'm experiencing now is truly unfamiliar territory.

I've heard it said (and I think I've mentioned it here before) that major life changes occur every seven years in one's lifetime. I suppose I'm right on track at 35.

I just have to remind myself that I have never strayed far from my passions, and the clouds will clear in time, as they always do.

Letting myself be also means honoring my own feelings. I've always been a feeling person, but I've also always sort of pushed my feelings away or at least kept them hidden because I thought that something else -- usually the opinions of other people -- were more important. But not anymore.

I will put my own heart first, and trust that it will always be a good compass, because I am a good person at heart.

I'll close this post with a short poem by Rumi, because it's always a good reminder to just be myself:

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.