Chaos creates change.
I write this because too many people believe that happiness comes from striving after perfection. Lives must be instagram-ready to be worthy. Yet, instagram-ready lives are rarely interesting.
The biggest secret that truly well rounded people won’t tell you—unless they think you’re mentally ready for it—is that true happiness only comes once you’re willing to feel deeply uncomfortable.
When I set out on my journey all those years ago, I really wasn’t sure where I was going. I knew I had a creative streak, but the details about where my creativity would be best utilized wasn’t clear to me at the time.
Since I didn’t get a lot of self-exploration time growing up, the search for my true calling took up a great deal of my young adulthood and middle years as well.
Before I could begin the hunt to discover the missing treasure of me, I had to leave behind all of the baggage of “shoulds” I was saddled with.
Next, I started seeking out everything that wasn’t me.
Many of my discoveries, early on, challenged me. They made me question not only what I believed, but why.
For the first time in my life I felt uncertain about my future. My dreams about my life became blurry.
Little did I know but this uncertainty was the first real glimpse of the path I would eventually be brave enough to take.
Over time, gems started to appear amongst the ever churning sea of discovery. It’s not that the gems weren’t always there, but I had to grow to spy their unfamiliar patterns. I had to become unflinching in the face of the chaos that I knew they represented.
These pieces, as scary as they seemed at the time, eventually became part of me, allowing me to discover even more fascinating things.
That’s when I realized that the world isn’t as chaotic and scary as it once seemed. My initial fears were all within me. It was my old comfortable me feeling threatened by the wild soul* that was beyond their control, the wild soul that was daring them to take a chance on the unknown.
This is the definition of being alive. Being alive is a struggle. The Magic wants us to struggle like a butterfly emerging its chrysalis of familiarity. It wants us to transform. It wants us to discover our secret story that only our wild soul knows.
The Magic, however, is a trickster. The Magic only gives us part of the pieces we need to be successful on our life’s journey.
The other pieces are hidden.
To discover them, we must be willing to follow our souls into the wilderness where the gods of chaos and uncertainty rule.
—Tessla, Lost Soul Found
*Read the book “Courting the Wild Twin” by Martin Shaw. He’s an accomplished storyteller and expounds upon this concept at a much deeper level than I do here.
