Marching To The Beat of Your Own Drum
We have been propelled into an unfamiliar world.
The once simple trip to the grocery store, is rife with stress. People wearing masks, people not wearing masks, and the lightness of children’s laughter no where to be heard.
Tensions are high as people avoid eye contact, and those who do connect from a distance, risk triggering someone’s fear or anger. Eyes are lowered to the ground.
We are humbled in the presence of each other.
This new world is two sides divided. We are told repeatedly how to live our lives but all the information coming in is from opposing viewpoints, and to top it off, there are the added controversies of being controlled in a new world order.
What if we stopped listening?
What if we decided to strip all of this away, deciding that we are the only ones who know what is best for our own families…a separation from uncertainty. The power that comes from within.
The biggest stress I find right now, is not living up to expectations. The question I face is WHO’S expectations am I not living up to? I worry that I will fail this test in life, as a parent, as a partner and as a business owner. I lower my own bar, only to raise it back up again. This is a daily practice and it’s driving me, and my family, insane.
The deeper I look for motivation inside my psyche, the further it retreats.
When I stop looking, it comes forth in the form of creativity and passion. I try to grasp on and it eludes me once more.
The point of this whole process I am still struggling to reveal.
I stumbled upon a great article ‘My Therapist Say’s No One Cares’ by Rachel Kim Raczka that reminds me there is no one looking through my window making checkmarks in my little book of life.
This makes me feel a little better.
When I was younger, in my twenties, I loved to dance. I learned my own style and rhythm from dancing to my own beat that was hidden between the obvious tempo of the bass. It made me feel alive to not follow the expectations that were laid out, by whom? The dancing police?? That feeling though, I carry with me now as I encroach a new way of life.
I mature slowly through this worldwide event that is causing upheaval for everyone. I realize that I need to find this power once again. There are no rules to how to process and live through this. The best advice I have found, is to slow down.
I slow my pace.
In this space of mediacy, I find my own presence, absent from the reflection of others. There is no expectation here other than my own.
I will myself to drop this too. It serves no function here.
I learn to trust that if it brings me joy, it will be done.
I learn the expression of my true self, separate from ‘The Other’.
I learn…to march to the beat of my own drum.
Tina Simpson is the owner of Twisted Oak Holistic Health and is a Deep Tissue Massage and Reiki practitioner on Salt Spring Island, BC.
