Life is an Ocean
On Getting Unstuck
Dear Friend,
Life is an ocean. We are made to explore its infinite breadth and depth. But often I don't feel like an explorer. Much of the time I just feel stuck.
Stuck at one depth, in one spot.
From this one spot, I can forget that there is even an ocean to explore. I start to believe that this one spot is all there is. From this one spot I lose my perspective, and myself.
This is why it’s so important to develop a daily practice of intentionally “unsticking” ourselves—not only to maintain our perspective, but to protect and grow our capacity to experience life fully.
We all have our “favorite spot” from which to view life. This was likely determined when we were young, passed down through generations.
Our “favorite spot” may not even be a pleasant one. It may not provide a very good view of life. But it remains our favorite, not because of its positive value, but simply because it's familiar.
People tend to choose familiar over good. It's why we sometimes choose dead things over living ones. Life is always changing, and that can be irritating if we’re looking for familiarity. Dead things don’t change. Or move. In this way, dead things can be convenient and comforting.
My default depth—my familiar, favorite spot—is one where life is a struggle. It’s hard to do what you love. Money is hard to find. Relationships are a heavy responsibility and sometimes a burden one must bear. From my favorite spot, one’s highest calling in life is to make things better for others. If making life better for others makes life harder for one’s self, even better...
This may be a familiar view for some. For others, this sounds ridiculous. It all depends on where you've been sitting.
Some of us are sitting on life’s main floor; others are in the balcony. Some of us are behind a pole. One thing is certain: none of us are in the exact same seat as anyone else. Even those sitting in the same section, while seeing life from a similar point of view, have a slightly different view.
Freedom is realizing that these are not assigned seats. We can go anywhere.
Our favorite spot can become our prison. Eventually, we can atrophy. We become unmoving. Unchanging. We become the familiar thing. The dead thing.
Death is what happens when we stop moving. Death is what happens when we stop changing and growing.
Death can happen while we are still clocking in. It can happen while our bodies walk through their highly predictable motions—patterns programmed into us through generations who sat in the same assigned seat and continued to stay put.
Life is not meant to be watched from a seat.
Life is a piece of art to be enjoyed, from every angle—a work of art which we create.
You don’t belong in a seat; you belong in the ocean. All of it.
But how? How do we even begin to get out of a seat we've been stuck in for so long? How can we escape this prison?
Our first step is to notice. Awareness is always the first step. Look around. Where have you been sitting? How long have you been there? Are you stuck? If you are, who is keeping you there?
Our next step is to realize that we are free—that, if we want to, we can get up right now and walk all around the room of life. We don’t have to stay put. We don’t have to keep thinking or believing or operating in the same, familiar ways. It’s all optional. It’s all fluid. And it’s all up to you.
Once we've taken the first two steps, the third is possible: we move. We get up and walk around. We try another point of view. I can’t say exactly what this means for you, but I can say that once we are unstuck, movement happens. It has to.
What comes next can feel scary—in the way that skydiving or scuba diving feels scary. Being surrounded by infinite space can feel terrifying. But it's a completely different scenario for a dead thing than it is for a living one. You are made to fly.
The space beyond this is limitless. Infinite movement and possibility. We can’t even know where we’ll go next, because we’ve never been there before—no one has. That is your job. That’s why you’re here. To be alive, as only you can be.
The final thing I’ll say is that movement after stuck-ness can—and maybe should—be slow and gentle. There’s no need to rip ourselves out of our seat. If anything, that would just send us deeper into the arms of whatever is familiar. Instead, we can be curious. We can move slowly. We can be gentle with ourselves. It can take a lifetime. In fact, that’s probably exactly how long it should take. And what a wonderful use of one’s life—because, think of what we now will pass down through generations.
—Nathan
Originally posted at: https://nathanpeterson.net/ocean