And now what?
Reflections on beginnings, endings, and everything in between
He was insatiable. It didn’t matter how many times I picked him up and spun him around, my three-year-old nephew couldn’t get enough. Each circle with my arms wrapped around his tiny body caused him to toss his head back in pure joy, his laughter exploding in contagious waves.
“Again!!” he’d exclaim, as I noticed my own head happily (and dizzily) spinning, too.
“One more time, buddy…let’s make this the biggest one…YET!” And with that, our little dance of centrifugal joy carried us both until I collapsed onto the ground. The air was ripe with the aliveness of the moment, our joy palpable. We each let out a deep sigh as smiles sat effortlessly on our faces.
And without missing a beat, he popped up again with eager eyes to ask, “And now what? And then what will we do after that?”
Maybe it’s that we’re wired from a young age to always track forward - always be looking ahead. But recently, I’ve realized this incessant habit of always tracking what now and what’s next has a shadow side, resulting in an interesting cultural phenomenon: the need to achieve the result of next has created a series of hard, defined beginnings and endings. We climb up the ladder and go down the slide, over and over again. It may be a thrill, but it’s a transactional - and ultimately limited - path. The continuous process of creating boxes to check and tracking goals to achieve has inadvertently drawn us further away from the kind of joy and presence that can erupt out of us if we let the Universe take us for a spin.
I'm fully aware that if we look around, current world circumstances might make us feel like we are not only precariously balanced on a tightrope, but one that’s under a hot spotlight inside a circus tent. (Believe me, I do.) Certainly, with all that’s transpired on a global scale over the past few months (okay…and years), many of us are just trying to make it through each day. We don’t always have the luxury of finding moments to reflect on the great unknown or going for a joyride. But what if there was a way to find some of the deep presence that exists in the thrill of choosing to break the mold and step into the middles - the spaces that are transitional unknowns?
After all, isn’t that where life really happens? When we are exploring this jungle gym we call life, can we reconnect to the exploration and adventure with curiosity, awe, and maybe even the thrill of something we haven’t (yet) tried?
Instead of simply climbing the ladder and taking another ride down the slide, what if we took a second to pause on the platform and see what we could see? Really looking at what else we wanted to explore allows us to decide what calls to us. Climbing up further might allow you to check out the view. You might not feel like you have the upper body strength for a jaunt across the monkey bars, but perhaps you just hang for a moment on the way over to the swings. Standing in the midst of life’s great playground, what happens if you take a breath and choose a new direction?
It’s deeply radical to ask ourselves what we want at any given moment. (In fact, the idea sits in stark contrast to a culture that tries to get us to consistently conform and is quick to shame us back in line if we digress too far.) This is also very different from the things that we should, can, or have to do. The obligations of our lives may factor into our choices, but we have become so disconnected from these messages of shameless want and free exploration that it’s often difficult to determine what is what.
What if we listened to our bodies - and tried to trust our inner pull? What if we let go of needing to get to the next end, and instead really tuned into our body and taking it one step at a time? For those of us disconnected from this practice, the inquiry may bring up excitement and curiosity, or it may trigger fear and uncertainty. What if either was welcome? It’s all information that allows us to dig deeper, and the paradox is that any ending is also a beginning (which is also an end). The deeper key seems to be in letting the process of and now what remains alive. This aliveness means that instead of needing to create ends, we feel (or fall) into the cycle of being that is about the exploration rather than the destination.
This may drop in as a simple, yet profound question: and now what?
The body possesses a natural intelligence that we often ignore - especially when we often consider ourselves primarily thinking beings who feel. But what if we are actually feeling beings who occasionally think? If this question makes you feel at all uncomfortable, you’re not alone. Reconnecting to our natural desires and deepest dreams is not a practice that we are always encouraged to entertain.
If you want to play around with this concept, start by standing up and closing your eyes. Wherever you are, let yourself be there. What do you notice? What do you hear? What do you sense or feel? (Speak out loud anything that comes to mind - it can be quite helpful.) And after a few moments, ask yourself: “Now what?” See what answer(s) arise. Transport yourself to an imaginary playground, and see what is in front of you. Are you on the ground, ready to climb? Are you ready to cross the monkey bars, or perhaps crave the feeling of the wind in your face as you pump your legs? Invite yourself to spend some time exploring, feeling into what calls to you, and when you’re ready, allow yourself to come back to where you are standing, knowing that this is YOUR playground, and you can return at any time…
Did you try it? What happened?
Whether you feel like you are precariously balanced on a tightrope or standing on the platform of a jungle gym, remember that there are ways to shift into different spaces. If moving through life with a renewed sense of connection and choice is something that appeals to you - if the and now what can become a launching pad for the experiences you most want to enjoy - commit to returning to this exploration. Habits take practice (and time) to loosen, shift, bend, and eventually, change. Somewhere along the way, being overly goal-oriented has made our lives more like a series of beginnings and endings we try to place in careful boxes than a curious exploration of what comes next. Even if that means taking one step and returning to what’s familiar (or climbing the ladder and going down the slide again), that act of daring to choose differently begins to change the paradigm.
After all, life is just a series of temporary landings (or jungle gym platforms) that await our next choice - the next opportunity to take off. Perhaps as we learn to touch down, we let a smile erupt from deep inside us that buzzes with the excitement of and now what. This is, after all, the great unknown.