Working With Disappointment: Leaning Into What Is

I love calendars! I love planning my life in the little boxes a calendar provides. I love paper and pen so an old fashioned Day-planner really gets my juices flowing. Each new year I craft my schedule into my planner and when I am finished... all feels right with the world. I am in control.

 So far this year absolutely nothing in my life has worked out as planned. From concerts and travel plans to my work and facilitation schedule.....it has all been wiped clean. It feels as if the Universe has taken her beautiful,cosmic fingers and flicked away most of what I had been counting on for the year. 

Not surprisingly, the only thing that feels right is this very moment. And why shouldn't it? This moment is all we have. It's not as if this hasn't always been the case, but lately it feels as if I no longer have a choice in the matter. I have to go with the flow or be knocked down by its ridiculously strong current.

There is one thing that cannot be flicked away with cosmic fingers and that's me. I still have a burning desire to know myself through creativity. I work in my altered book as much as I can and it feels like magic I paint for myself and spend time alone with color and my breath and that is enough. The work feels steady and informative as it drops me into my body. I feel the disappointment and sense of loss that has come up as my plans have dissolved and I paint them. I feel and I paint and I do not get stuck in the muck of it all.

I am learning with even greater depth what it is to go with the flow. My plans are wiped clean and I cannot see yet what will take their place. But I do know that something will happen. Something always happens. Maybe it's that what I thought I could plan isn't at all big enough for what is to come. Or maybe it's just that by not having a plan, life can't possibly go off course - it is just as it should be with room left for delicious surprises!