I’m Leaving vs. I’m Expanding

“I’m Leaving” vs “I’m Expanding.” I saw this so simply, and beautifully displayed by an inspiration of mine, artist Mari Andrew, as I scrolled through Instagram. I’ve decided to take it as my new mantra as I move into new beginnings, that no matter how exciting or positive, still feel like an ending in a way. The truth is, and sometimes the truth is so raw and real and deep and challenging that it’s hard to accept, that every single living, breathing moment change is happening.

I had an amazing yoga teacher in Myanmar who over and over again reminded us throughout class of this….nothing is permanent. It was a simple reminder, yet one that has impacted me more deeply than I can express. Each tiny moment life is unfolding and changing. As humans we crave stability and comfort, sameness, permanence. But the reality is the more we accept and embrace change, the more we can learn to flow and bend and move with life instead of resisting it.

I’ve just accepted a new job, one I actually applied for and didn’t get 3 years ago as I was graduating from University. It’s funny how life works, and how we always arrive where we need to be when we need to be there, and sometimes to us it looks differently than how we wanted it to, but actually, and only in looking back, do we realize it was all perfect timing anyways. How each moment we are working towards something bigger, whether we realize it or not.

Before I sent my acceptance email I took a few quiet moments  I haven’t had very many of those in the last 10 months) to reflect on change and life and living. Maybe it will resonate with you:

I am about to change my life again. My journal is just slightly out of reach from the comfort of my bed, so I sit here typing instead. It’s out of pages anyways, I think, and smile, nostalgic already. How fitting, my “adventure awaits” journal is full and urging me towards a new chapter quite literally.

I sit here cozied up under my zebra blanket in the cozy summer home in Da Lat, Vietnam. I have been here a dozen times. This, Vietnam, has become my home. It’s so quiet. I finally have time to think after weeks of new sights and sounds and talking, talking, talking, talking, exploring every option and avenue. Now it’s time for thinking. For reflection.

I’m about to hit the fast forward button on my life. Last year this time I was stuck in pause, then lost in slow motion. Slowly, carefully I have been cultivating and moving towards life in double time. With an email and a few words typed out and sent, an acceptance, my life is about to change. Sacrifices and explanations and turned down offers and opportunities will ride along-side this decision quietly, all of the other paths invisible to everyone else, except for me. I may still want to wander them or wonder about them. The small pieces and steps and action steps we take are like little secrets only we know about, the final product or choice is only what everyone else sees, like a bright and shiny neatly wrapped package we present to the world, the mess of wrapping paper and tape and ribbons out of sight, irrelevant.

“ I may still want to wander them or wonder about them.”

Soon there will be contracts, and plane tickets, and impossible goodbyes. There will be reunions and welcome backs and familiarity and newness wrapped into one. There will be unfinished plans and new dreams in its place. There will be moments where I will be gasping for air, and times where I feel like I’m floating, flying.

This is life. The ups, the downs, the unknowns. The fears, the hopes, the dreams. The waiting and the chasing. The chaos and the quiet. All of these feelings and emotions tangled up in each other as we go about our days. The complexity of it all seems overwhelming until I remember it’s actually quite simple: everything we are is already enough, everything we need is already inside of us. There are no right or wrong choices, just different paths leading us to where we are already going. And as cliché as it may sound, every change is just a season or a chapter in our beautiful, unpredictable book of life.