We’re back into the swing of things, and stepping out every morning for a daily walk followed by a dip in the Atlantic, (which doesn’t seem to realise that it is actually summer).
And I’ve been thinking about decisions. How we make decisions that can change the course of our lives? What inner process do we go through to resolve questions that live, wriggling and uncomfortable, inside us?
To explore this question for myself, I start small.
How do I decide to immerse myself in f*cking cold water every morning? (You’d think asking Why would be more pertinent!)
I take small steps into the water up to the level that is bearable. Easy peasy. It’s the last part that is the most difficult: immersing my upper torso and head. This is where I pause and struggle with myself.
If I try to cheerlead myself into taking the leap (Come on! You can do this!) my contrariness kicks in. Nah, she says. I don’t wanna. If I harden my jaw and will myself to immerse (Right, 1, 2, 3…) she gets even more wilful right back. Nope, not doing it.
So I have to do it slant. I have to trick myself into it. I look up at the sky, or gaze ahead at the horizon, and think of something else. Or think of nothing. Hum a little song. Then almost of her own volition, my body leans forward, gives herself to the water. And I’m in.
When we were deciding whether we were ready to start trying for a baby, it was Joel who expressed his own readiness and posed the question to me. It took me six weeks to answer. For that time, I held the question within me and let it sit, all awkward elbows & knees. No matter how uncomfortable it got, I cleared space for it to sit and be with me.
Then it was a matter of taking the time to notice all the initial feelings that were clustered around this question, clamouring for attention: the impending loss of our freedom, sadness at relinquishing our carefree togetherness, the fear of the unknown, the anxiety about all that could go wrong. As the days rolled by, I aired these concerns to Joel and he listened. We talked and talked.
And because I’m a bit of a hippie-child, I also kept an eye and ear out for little messages from the universe. Not in the sense that I was indecisive and thus easily swayed by some arbitrary sighting of a bird or a strangely-shaped cloud, but more in the knowledge that we are continually in conversation with the world around us. There is a flow of dialogue, a question and response, if we are open to listening.
What was the world offering up for me to bear witness to, as I sat with this question?
At the time, we were visiting his family in Australia. One day, we took a drive up to the Alice Springs Telegraph Station, established in 1871 to relay messages between Adelaide down South and Darwin way up north. While Joel took photographs, I went to sit on a bench and watch some wallabies grazing nearby, marvelling at their weirdness, like made-up creatures in a children’s book.
One in particular caught my eye. She had an odd-shaped protuberance near her chest. As she hopped a little closer to some sweet grass, I realised with a jolt that she was carrying a little joey in her furry pouch. It was its one gangly leg that I could see. I stayed very still and eventually, the joey shifted and stuck out its pointed snout.
I imagined what it must feel like to have your baby snuggled up safe and sound close to your belly, and to feel its heartbeat and warm snuffles as you moved through the world. My answer had begun to take shape.
When I was deciding whether or not to take the last remaining steps to put my memoir about surviving domestic violence, Boiling a Frog Slowly out into the world, again I sat with the question and the churning uncertainty, the fearful What if’s. Eventually the fear subsided, the anxiety abated. A quiet calm knowing began to shine in the dim uncertainty.
During this time, my phone pinged with a Facebook message from a stranger. She’d read a recent article I’d written about this chapter in my life and it had helped her understand the similar plight in which her daughter found herself.
The question had found its answer. My decision was made.
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer," - Rainer Maria Rilke