Wednesday 26 April 2017

Lost and Found

A significant part of my time in India this year has been focused on the beautiful but chaotic process of ever-learning more about myself and the world around me. I’ve been prompted, pushed, pulled, and sometimes dragged into experiences, events, and conversations which make me question what I value most in life and whether I am acting in a way that corresponds with my values. 

What is that I hold onto? What is it that I think is important? Do I spend my time in a way that shows that? In what way do I want to engage with the world? (Am I doing that?) How do my actions and beliefs impact other beings around me? Am I happy? Do I feel loved by others? Am I loving others? Am I loving myself?  

I feel that these are important questions—and I ask them, in one way or another, almost every day. As such, time and time again, I find myself in need of the reminder that all of this is a process. For better or for worse, we are people who are caught in change and motion rather than grounded in constancy. 
(This is felt rather poignantly when travelling to new cities almost every week, but there are other ways of noting this in our lives even when we seem to stay still…we are always changing.) I’m trying to become more comfortable with uncertainty, and also with the seeming-dichotomy of knowing something (“holding onto something”) and being open to new ways-of-knowing/being.

My desire to try out new things and be okay with change, uncertainty, and imperfection has manifested in a rather practical way for me this year, where I have dedicated some time to a new project: shooting and editing videos which tell stories which I believe to be important and interesting. You can stay tuned for the release of some of those in the near future...

Sometimes we lose ourselves to find ourselves; and sometimes those two actions seem to be indistinguishable from each other.

I’m pretty sure that’s why I wrote this song, Lost and Found. (I picked up a guitar the other day and the melody and the lyrics came out within about 4 minutes.) I suppose these thoughts have been percolating for some time now… You can listen to it on my soundcloud here or just read the lyrics below.

~


I found myself at the sea.
I found myself by the water.
I found myself as I lost all the thoughts
that I thought I had to hold onto.

I lost myself at the sea.
I lost myself by the ocean.
I lost myself as I found all the thoughts
that I thought I’d learned to let go of.

I’m still holding, I’m still losing, I’m still finding.
And searching and praying and cursing and letting go.