Forgetting to remember

I was always one of these people who saw the opportunity and mostly ran at it. I say always and then mostly because that’s what it felt like. Like I always ran at. Most of the time. Except the times I didn’t.

And those times? The times I waited? I hoped someone else would take me. Gather me up in their love or their dream or their enthusiasm or their passion and sweep me along. And those people? They could never love enough or dream my dream or jump high enough or pull me hard enough to make me come. And either I let them go or they let me go.

And so because of that I know people don’t move until they’re ready. I know people can’t teach you the lesson you need to learn, until you’re ready to hear it. I know sometimes you don’t see people until it’s the right time. They could have swirled in the circle in your life for years, maybe even decades and you did not notice them. I know that one by one piece-by-piece it all comes together. But every time I needed to find a teacher or a change-maker they appeared, as if by magic, and suddenly I saw things I had not seen or had forgotten for far too long.

Today someone told me she forgot she even had a dream until she saw something I wrote. She’d forgotten she had a dream for 5 years! She needed those 5 years; they were full of everything that needed to happen before (before she could be ready to remember she had a dream). She is so scared. What does it mean if you remember you have a dream and it means you WILL have to change everything about what you’ve been doing in the forgetting to find the remembering? That’s frickin scary right? And who knows what’s that like?

I would say all those people who were the people who saw the opportunity and mostly ran at it. Except those times they didn’t. I know those people. They are all around me right now and as we gather forces and hold each other’s hands and see each other’s fears and celebrate each other’s success and stand on the edge, and go anyway – we know that remembering is way, way, way better than all the forgetting.

You have to want it the most. I can’t want it more than you. I cannot prise you from the place of unsureness and make you come alive. Only you can do that.

I can listen to your struggle. I can tell you with certainty and clarity and passion that what you want is REAL and TRUE and OK and that it will require WORK and COMMITMENT and COURAGE and that sometimes it will be MAGNIFICENT and sometimes it will be HARD and SCARY.

But I cannot make you step over the edge unless it’s your time. And only you can decide if it’s time. Your time. The time. Time to stop being comfortable in the uncomfortable comfort zone of the forgotten.

It does not always feel safe out here. It does not always feel solid. But it does always feel like being ALIVE.