3: Courage & Self-awareness (part 2)

I just wrote this spontaneously, and it is the result of focussing on courage and self-awareness this week:

I want to find something that I can truly devote my life to. It’s a constant search I suppose. I have been searching unconsciously for my whole life and consciously for years and years now. For now, photography is the closest thing that I can find and I know I can’t keep waiting until the circumstances are perfect to start working. You just have to start working and the circumstances will arrange themselves to something suitable.

My life is now officially on autopilot. By this I mean that:

1. Social convention is out the window. So is the calendar.

I’ve tried hard to keep some kind of formal discipline or whatever for the last few months to see if it would work, but now I’m back to being more sensitive and in-tune with how I feel (physical, mental, emotional) and just going with that instead of plodding along like a machine. I am not a machine. I am a human being – I am far more sensitive, intelligent, intuitive and perceptive than a machine could ever be. Why is it that we value rote repetition and predictable results when we are capable of sheer magic? We may ‘fail’ to meet projected targets one day, but the next we more than make up for it by shooting far beyond previous expectations.

2. I am literally not planning anymore.

I know what I have to do and I do it. I will obey basic cues and nudges from life, but ultimately I’m not going to force my future into some pre-conceived mould of what happiness ‘should be’. Because I’ve noticed that oftentimes I get exactly what I want but when I get there I realize that although my ideas have come to fruition, what I’m experiencing is an outmoded idea of happiness. Ideas of happiness don’t necesssarily equate to true happiness… Sometimes the most unexpected and surprising things happen when you just open your heart a little more than you usually do and have a little more trust in life’s momentum and ability to carry you and take care of you. You get way more than you bargained for.

3. The only things I am making a commitment to at this moment are love and gratitude.

I am choosing to be in a constant state of gratitude. I like how it feels – it makes me feel really connected with all of life. I am choosing to count my blessings. New York City is so unlike Singapore because it is like a really imperfect machine. The subway is old and seems like it’s falling apart and there is so much chaos in this society (relative to modern Singapore which has a distinct absence of chaos or dirt). Yet NYC is one of the most prosperous cities in the world – there is so much talent and so many great ideas here.

Life doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to work out (and it ‘works out’ when you’re happy with it). Life isn’t all about mathematical precision (isn’t it interesting that most ‘perfect’ shapes in mathematics are actually never actually found in nature?) and it’s not always shiny and clean. It’s messy and organic and unpredictable and illogical and dirty and rough around the edges. But it is warm and open, constantly growing and full of love and joy and being. There is so much love around – just not in the exact form that we want it to be in. I want to accept and appreciate love and beauty in all their forms. I want to tune myself into this frequency and inhabit this for as long as I am alive. I like feeling this way and I like the way the world looks when I am grateful, open and loving. I am making the commitment to look at what works and to notice every single little beautiful, funny or cute thing in my daily reality.