on the right track

There’s a yellowing piece of scratch paper that’s been on the magnet board above my desk since about 2013 or so. To this day, I can practically transport myself back to my shared Williamsburg apartment, sitting on the 100 year old wood floor in my bedroom where I first wrote it. The quote, scribbled late at night while reading Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost says, “The process of transformation consists mostly of decay, and then of this crisis when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt.”

I was in my mid-20’s when that quote stuck out to me like a universal truth. It’s as if it was written to validate all of the feelings that were swirling around my orbit during that life stage. Since then, whenever life feels like a splash of cold water to the face, I remember this quote and think, oh yeah, this is supposed to feel like this. 

Maybe it’s because I’m an Aries or because I’m an ENFJ, or likely due to both, the minute I decide I want to change something, I want it transformed immediately. I don’t want to waste my time belaboring the feelings and emotions that come with it. I want to be wholly transformed in an instant. Solnit’s quote reminds me that the momentum I crave will never come without the layered dimension of experience. Before I can appreciate the hindsight of progress, I have to sit in the decay of one way of being so that I can wholly enter into another. 

The tension between these two places is my most persistent feeling these days. It’s a little bit of hope and a little bit of loss. It applies to so many things happening in both my life and the world at large. The end of the year brings these feelings up for a lot of us, so if you’re feeling this too, not solidly in one place or another, you’re on the right track. I’m happy to be here together.

Get this week’s playlist here.

Sending love from the inbetween.

Until next Sunday,

Meghan