Double exposure (Written 6 March 2011)

Picture: A cropped version of a picture taken at a music practice at Katilist Theatre, in Observatory, Cape Town, in 2008. Came out as two photos in one shot, and I love the effect.

As I continue along this incredible part of my journey through life, I can feel myself growing and changing, and the realizations along the way are not always easy. Self-awareness, looking into that mirror and taking a good, hard look at everything about myself, is not always fun and exciting. Along with my recent breakthroughs, daily successes that seem to be propelling me towards my goals at an alarming pace, I’ve encountered some challenges. And this is how I know I’m changing: I know that I am directly responsible for everything in my life, both the wonderful, affirming successes as well as the challenges that have cropped up and have the potential to undermine my successes or derail my resolve and enthusiasm.

Part of the clarity I’m gaining, as I progress through my weekly sessions with life coach, Inez Woods, is that I’m starting to identify patterns in my life. I can now clearly see how decisions I made in the past impact on me and complicate my life now, and the consistent theme is: whenever I handle something in a way that is not empowered, not accountable, not facing an issue squarely and truthfully, not bearing possible/inevitable consequences in mind - or let’s say whenever I do the ostrich thing - I can be sure that that particular matter will not go away quietly – it will come back and complicate my life when I least want it to.

So what’s the lesson? For me, the lesson is that, no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant, even embarrassing, something may be, I have to deal with it like a responsible adult, address it humbly and honestly, tie up that loose end and move on. When I don’t, I might delude myself for a while (often years, in my case), but it ALWAYS resurfaces and when I eventually get round to sorting it out, it’s a lot messier, and it blocks my personal energy to the point where, if I don’t address it and sort it out, I can’t move on with my other goals.

What am I talking about? Sometimes it’s something like not having called a company to explain that I’ve been retrenched, and watching ‘helplessly’ as my debit orders “bounce” month after month, and sometimes it’s more personal, like an ambiguous relationship that’s been going nowhere for years, but because it’s sort of worked in other ways, I’ve just let the niggling things slide.

A line that Oprah Winfrey says comes to mind, and I know for sure that it’s never too late to tie up a loose end in my life: “When you know better, do better.” There are many reasons why we all do what we do, and I gain strength from knowing that everyone is on some kind of journey, that we’re all generally figuring things out as we go along.

Today I give thanks for the people in my life who’ve known me for many years and who love me. I give thanks for a subset of that group, the ones who accept that I have a set agenda for myself that doesn’t always fulfil their expectations, and who love me anyway. And I give thanks for new people coming into my life, at a very exciting time for me, who in different ways are adding their energy to my life, fuelling me along my journey. I choose to believe that there’s always a reciprocal energy flow, and in this case, I sincerely hope I am enriching their lives as they’re doing mine.