Let's go, shall we?

Many years ago - I had just started university - I worked part-time as a piano teacher. Every week, I would meet about a dozen students and take part of the joy that followed every time a favorite song came to life through their fingers. One winter morning when the children were on their Christmas break, I woke up to see through my window a thick blanket of snow that had fallen overnight. A couple of friends and I decided to delight our own inner children and headed out to the sledding hill. After navigating my way through the snow all the way to the top, I was just about to go down the hill when I saw a familiar little face whose eyes met mine. It turned out to be one of my piano students, a little girl. Surprise and confusion shone in her eyes and then she suddenly exclaimed, “Miss! What are YOU doing here? I’ve never seen you wearing a hat before!”

For her, I was clearly in the wrong place and in the wrong context, and instead of finger exercises and notes, she learned that day that teachers also wear coats and hats when it's cold outside and that adults, too, can go sledding. Something that a few minutes earlier hadn't even been part of her map now suddenly was, but since children often have an easier time than us adults reevaluating what we hold to be true, she soon burst into a big smile, shrugged her shoulders, and then quickly went down the hill.

This blog post is my first after a somewhat longer break from writing. For me, the past year has entailed new steps in life, deeper studies and growth work, but also introspection, internal cleaning and occasional encounters with resistance and fears. A lot has been active at the same time and writing has needed to pause. And that's how life is sometimes - everything has its own time. But if I'm being completely honest, it has been a bit frustrating that some things in my life have stopped even though many others have been in motion. It has felt like a big step and almost somewhat silly to suddenly reappear on the radar.

There is a word in the English language called momentum. Momentum is the force that keeps us moving forward in life even when faced with resistance and obstacles. And much like on a sledding hill, we create momentum when, after a while, we start to pick up speed in what we have chosen to focus on, when we start experiencing flow in what we are doing. But life doesn’t always feel like a downhill slope and sometimes, if we have been standing still for a while or for some reason have had to slow down, picking up where we left off can feel like starting the engine and driving uphill. It can be both arduous and frustrating... until we pick up speed again.

It can also be that when reappearing on the radar – and this could be as simple as talking to someone we haven’t seen in a while – we might no longer be the exact same person we were the last time we met. My guess is that most of us know what it can feel like to have changed, grown, upgraded or taken new steps in life and then meet someone who still holds their old image of us. It can be somewhat of a clash. It’s a bit like “I met someone from my past and suddenly I fell into old patterns”. Or it might be clear if we have started to grow apart.

A teacher of mine said a while ago that authenticity means sharing our truth as it is in this moment. And what we hold to be true can change as we grow, heal, upgrade, try new directions and perspectives. And that’s okay. It’s a part of life and it doesn’t mean that what we previously thought and believed was bad or wrong. It was simply younger and now we are older.

Other people's life paths (and our own, too, for that matter) can certainly sometimes awaken both confusion and surprise in us, and just like for the little girl on the sledding hill, their experiences, choices or perspectives may not even be on our map. We may not be able to simply smile, shrug and whizz on. But maybe we can relax our shoulders a bit, find a place of curiosity within and ask "Would you like to share more?" Because I think that many times this can be enough and make a pretty big difference, both in our uphill and downhill slopes of life.

Warmly,

Karolina