The Fourteenth One.

 Afternoon,

Subheading: On Knowing and Unknowing. 

There are people in life that you can look to as if they were the Northern Star. It's a cheesy analogy, but accurate. They will be shining their same familiar glow night after night, exactly where you left them last. You will not turn to them and find them suddenly in the south, or glowing purple, or ceasing to glow at all. We rightfully romanticize this steadiness, this reliability. When we need to center ourselves, we reach for these people. They restore balance. Regardless of the chaos unfolding around them, they do not waver in their beliefs, their support, or their way of existing. Tomorrow is another day, and it will be approached with the same level head of today. These are the people we want as our friends, partners, and family, because the world is a scary and confusing place and most people find comfort in having an anchor.

I am not at all that sort of person- a Northern Star. 

I am not a person that is easy to know, or love, because on occasion I have woken up an entirely different person. When presented with information that changes how I see life, I change how I live my life. 

One day I might be done quoting the book Untamed, but today is not that day. You see, this book so perfectly captures something I have struggled to vocalize:

"If we feel, know, and imagine- our lives, families, and world become truer versions of themselves. Eventually. But at first it's very scary. Because once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back. We are launched into the abyss- the space between the not-true-enough life we're living and the truer one that exists only inside us. So we say, "Maybe it's safer to just stay here. Even if it's not true enough, maybe it's good enough." But good enough is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation until they lie on their deathbed and wonder: What kind of life/relationship/family/world might I have created if I'd been braver?

    The building of the true and beautiful means the destruction of the good enough. Rebirth means death. Once a truer, more beautiful vision is born inside us, life is in the direction of that vision. Holding on to what is no longer true enough is not safe; it's the riskiest move because it is the certain death of everything that was meant to be. We are alive only to the degree to which we are willing to be annihilated. Our next life will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.

    I have lost identities, beliefs, and relationships it has hurt to lose. I have learned that when I live from my emotions, knowing, and imagination, I am always losing. What I lose is always what is no longer true enough so that I can take full hold of what is."

I have never been willing to operate very long in the realm of "good enough". The thing that I know, that I can't unknow, is that I'm capable of feeling so much more than that. I am not afraid to shed old ideas, identities, or to question everything that I thought I knew about myself and start discovering the truth all over again. In the face of death, I'm willing to be reborn. 

Something I have been told time and time again is that I am brave. Glennon Doyle describes this evolving person in the above passage as brave. I'm not sure that I would agree with this word choice, and instead would say I'm authentic.

It's a rare sort of person that is willing to live their life this way, and for good reason: it's fucking lonely.  

The choices we make when we discover a new truth can appear selfish, irrational, and spontaneous. Sometimes we don't offer any explanation, because we don't feel the need to justify our choices. We also know that our reasons won't make sense to others. This can cost us friends, or loved ones.

"Integrity means having only one self. Dividing into two selves- the shown self and the hidden self- that is brokenness, so I do whatever it takes to stay whole. I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and I let the world adjust. 

    I will never promise to be this way or that way, I will only promise to show up, as I am, wherever I am. That's it, and that's all. People will like me or not, but being liked is not my One Thing; integrity is. So I must live and tell my truth. Folks will come around or quit coming around. Either way: lovely. Anything or anyone I could lose by telling the truth was never mine anyway. I'm willing to lose anything that requires me to hide any part of myself."

So, no; I don't find living authentically, or with integrity, to be brave. I function this way because I simply don't know any other way to exist. My choices in life are based on what I believe to be true, right up until the moment I can't believe that anymore- then I recalibrate.

Moving on from people and situations isn't easy, it's just what is sometimes right, and true. 

Truth... that is my Northern Star.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this stuff, and come back for more things.