People love rituals. We are creatures of habit, who like to know what is coming, so we can live our lives quietly and without any hassle. Everything that disrupts the ordinary has to be normalized as quickly as possible, because we want to feel safe.
When you want to start again, you need to change your rituals and habits. You have to break with existing patterns, to make place for new ones. Resigning your job means that work rituals will disappear: snoozing in the morning, getting a coffee when you arrive at the office, incoming emails that will determine your work, time ticking away too slow, but more often too fast so it's too late for lunch and almost time to go home, chats with your colleagues about life after work. A new job will replace some of the stress. because even though the coffee cups and your lunch buddies will look different, the snoozing and chats will probably still be a part of your life.
Without having a new job, without lunch buddies or coffee in the morning, your new life feels like a huge black hole of unknown depths. Sure, you can make yourself a coffee at home, you can have lunch with potential partners and force yourself to start snoozing early in the morning. But facing the unknown nature of your work, which only gradually will become clear, goes against all human behaviour.
It's frightening not to know what is going to happen over the coming months and eventually years.
I regularly feel like I'm jumping into a pool of icecold water, that takes my breath away. It's like that typical sauna feeling when every fiber in your body cries out: WHY? Why jump into this bath, when we were having such a great time in the eucalyptus scented heat? But you know, while the fibers in your body keep shouting at you, that although the heat was indeed lovely and safe, once you'll climb out that cold bath, those little screaming fibers will start purring like kittens because the next feeling will be so much better than if you hadn't jumped.
So whenever I am mentally catching my breath in the cold, I imagine the wonderful feeling that will come next, and I try to be confident that everything will turn out right. The lack of rituals can only mean that there are endless possibilities and anything that will happen might become a new ritual in time.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
ReplyDeleteMarianne Williamson.