Paradigm Shift

The last month or two have been emotionally and spiritually turbulent, but for how challenging or upsetting a given situation might have been (mostly of my own doing, to be honest), in equal measure I have made great strides in faith, learning, and finding true joy.

I can be sort of a doomsdayer, sometimes. I think, "Well I drove off the last woman I was interested in. I guess I'll just resign myself to being #foreveralone." Or, if after repeated goal setting and personal reflection I still don't feel like I'm making any progress on behaviors I'd like to change, I'll leap straight to "I'm not meant to shake these parts of who I am. I'll always be [enter personal deficiency or weakness here]."

We all grow frustrated sometimes. It's the nature of most people, I think, that we get impatient when we aren't getting exactly what we want in the precise moment we've planned for it to arrive or occur. It can be the result of someone else's choices, or it might be the consequence of our own actions that create this animosity and irritation that we feel.

The beautiful thing about getting older is that for every hard thing you do and every setback you're willing to work through, you're becoming a more refined, informed, and skilled human being. That doesn't mean we don't all want for certain things, of course. Yes, I'm older and wiser. But I'm also desperate to find love. But in all of the setbacks in that particular pursuit, I'm learning to give myself some leeway. Having grace with others is so important, but I'm learning that having grace with yourself is every bit as critical in order to prevent all of those doomsday thoughts from consuming me one right after the other.

Katelyn is a beautiful person in more ways than one.
Also, she really wants a food processor. If anyone is feeling
extra generous, please consider gifting her one.

This weekend I hiked in Tucson with my friend, Katelyn. She and I met in about 2002 as we were heading into middle school and struck up a friendship and an eventual friend group that proved pivotal to my progression and sanity during those very strange tween/teen years. We hadn't hung out together in about four years, but we picked things up as if it had been a much shorter time than that.

Katelyn and I talked about the small-talky things like how work is going and where all of our family members are and what movies we've seen lately. We actually talked about small talk, a thing I love and a thing she doesn't have any interest in. But we also talked about our philosophies on life and the hard things that we have been through since we last spoke. I was really floored by the way she has handled the most difficult situations of her life since we last caught up, and one particular phrase she found and has been incorporating into her life really stuck out to me:

"What in this moment is lacking?"

I liked it for a lot of reasons, but most notably because it's an acknowledgement that even when we might think that something is amiss in our lives, we actually have so much. Sure, it would be easy for me to say that a lot of moments of my life are lacking a girlfriend/wife to share my experiences with. But this phrase also helps me remember that when I look around and see the beautiful opportunities that have been afforded me in this life, I am so blessed. So what if I haven't found the future Mrs. Baker yet? Yes, I'm going to keep looking; I want to build a life with someone. But if that's all I worry about, I won't be able to find any joy in the exceptionally beautiful things I already have.

So many beautiful moments in this life are polluted by thinking they're incomplete. In reality, if we aren't living fulfilling lives individually or in spite of whatever we feel like we haven't earned/achieved/found/purchased, will life really improve once we've gotten that thing we think we need?

I love Tucson.

This conversation came on the heels of having recently started reading The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life at the recommendation of a dear coworker that is all too often my de facto counselor. Though I'm only a few chapters in, I have loved the way this book has challenged the way that I process my world.

Two things have really impacted me so far, the first being the idea that there is a measurement system that the world creates that is absolutely garbage and has no impact on who I truly am and what I get to feel and experience. The second is the notion of giving yourself and others and A always.

The "measurement system" is in reference to traits, milestones or statuses that the world creates for us that we feel we must live up to. We've been engrained to think that certain things should be happening to us at certain times, and often in direct relation to other people's accomplishments/milestones. The authors of the book pose a question:

"How are my thoughts and actions, in this moment, 

reflections of the measurement world?"

That really made me think about the situations in my life in which I felt incomplete, and I realized that more often than not, my feelings of lacking existed because someone else had imposed some kind of measurement that I felt like I needed to live up to. But I don't ever want to feel that way again. I want to feel like I determine what is important to me and I get to measure my progress by what is important to me.

I'll stop here to add a caveat: I believe that God has sent us here for distinct purposes. I want to fulfill those, because my spiritual pursuits have brought me a lot of joy. I anticipate similar joy as I seek out other things I believe to be sanctioned by God and important for my life. But those are measurements I'm allowing for myself—not imposed by others—and am not allowing those to upset me if I'm not meeting them by certain ages or timeframes.

"You look so adventurous!" Katelyn said
as she took this photo.

The second part of this book, about giving yourself and others an A, has added to the elements of grace and leeway I mentioned earlier. The authors suggest that by giving yourself and others and A allows us to interact with people in ways that don't limit or judge them, but instead view them as people worth loving and respecting. That goes for how you see yourself too. In one passage, the authors explain that each person is "an integral voice" in the systems they participate in.

As I read that, I was filled with satisfaction with the realization that I am worth loving. I am someone of value. I am enough, based wholly on who I am now and not in relation to labels or measurements someone else puts on me.

I was grateful to be reminded of that. I've felt it before, but it's a reminder I could use frequently.

All of these thoughts and ideas have snowballed over the last month or so as I have come to realize that God is more lenient that I ever knew or understood. His love is real. And so are His expectations, which used to stress me out. But He understands that we can't be perfect, not yet at least. If anyone seems to be giving me an A all the time, it's Him. And if He can give me an A, I can certainly give myself and everyone that I interact with an A too.

Sure, I have goals. Some will go unfulfilled, which might be difficult to deal with. I'll get to reconcile those feelings as they come. But in the interim, I'm grateful to be viewing life as one big possibility that will bring beauty and good into my life. 

What in this moment is lacking? Very little. What grade do I deserve? An A. Always. And so do you.