intention, and patterns.

(Art by Lisa Smith)

I am participating in #Trust30, an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

Prompt #9: The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

(Prompt by Mary Jaksch)

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Consistency. Patterns. Our past. All those years I meant to send you a birthday card, but didn't. Not even the fact that I thought about you all day dulls the real truth that my intention wasn't enough.

Consistency. Breaking patterns. Creating a "now" and a "future." Stepping out of past patterns is scary, and hard. Or it is easy, and overwrought with a story about difficulty. "It is hard to change," we hear. And sure it is, if we story it as hard. If we story it as necessary and in the right order of things that we all change, that relationships falter and wither and thrive, that we grow toward sunlight and away from shadow, then change is what we will yearn for.

Layers. Days, weeks, months, years, decades, whole lives of layers.

What is too scary to write about? Only those things we have allowed ourselves to story into a frenzy – like death, aloneness, those who have wounded us. Those stories could as easily be stories of transition, solitude, opening up. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points, someone once said. At least.

What are we afraid to do? Claim new patterns, when others expect the old ones. To change them is to disrupt expectations, ours and theirs. But as Madame Curie said, "Dissymmetry causes phenomena."

Knock yourself off balance. Cause phenomena. Know you cannot predict how others will react. Change patterns. Shut off your GPS and get lost.