You know when you read something – maybe just some small thing – at just the right time, and inspiration + truth + ripeness come together in this seemingly mysterious way that just changes things?

I had one of those moments a couple of days back, when something Rupa wrote (in a comment over at the Fluent Self commentary bar) shifted something beautifully and seamlessly for me – something that I hadn’t even been trying to destuckify.

Tucked into the end of her New Year’s Chicken, this small sentence of love and recognition:

‘My tiny, sweet thing: The Yoga of Living.’

These eight words seemed to find fertile ground in my consciousness and take root, and a day or so later I found myself having a seemingly effortless answer to a long-term stuck uncurl before me.  To make sense of what this comment meant to me, a little background knowledge:

Many, many months ago I decided to work less days at Ze Dayjob so that I could focus on the whole doing-the-things-that-bring-me-great-joy-for-a-living thing.  But many, many months later, I still found myself totally stuck – paralysed – by the same problem: where do I start?

I have this big, grand yet somehow vague and elusive vision of an end place, where things are the shiniest they could be, and the most effective they could be, and THE BIGGEST THEY COULD BE.  And although the essence of this vision inspires me, the trying to start there just totally overwhelms me.  Because, I mean, where the hell do you start with something like that?

And yet, there were meanwhile other things I wanted to get underway – my Shiva Nata practice, my blogette, my language-learning, my journalling.  Things which keep getting waylaid by The Vision.  As in, Why am I working on learning Shiva Nata when The Vision is in need of my attention?! Or, Why do I think I have time to blog when The Vision is the first priority?!

Commence nothing whatsoever happening.  Because, at this stage, The Vision is a phantom.  A mountain of a phantom – formless, yet also huge and looming and completely unmanageable.

Havi, Fluent Self Pirate Queen, talks about every person doing their thing. Although, just to be clear, she also talks about not needing to have a thing.  And this is where I trip up.

Because I am one of those existential-crisis people she mentions who equate the thing with soul-purpose-that-I-must-figure-out-in-order-to-have-fulfilling-meaningful-life-and-GAH!-running-out-of-time-AGHHHHHHHH. And also the bit about not needing to know the name of your thing, which I most certainly do not, so thank goodness for that.

But the moment that this really hit home was reading Rupa’s comment.  Because, ohmygod, every thing starts out as a tiny, sweet thing.  (And, just for clarity, I know that ‘tiny, sweet thing‘ is a phrase that Havi coined, but this here is about all about the context.)  Or even a number of tiny, sweet things.  And, more importantly, that tiny, sweet things are things in and of themselves.  Woosh!

Hey, my brain and my heart said simultaneously, and then grinned knowingly at eachother.  Why don’t we officially create some tiny, sweet thing time?  Let’s forget about this Vision crap for a while and just do the things we love doing, trusting that they’ll take us to the next place, knowing that energy is a constant state of movement, and that we can start anywhere.

Brain and heart working together is a truly awesome combination.

Thusly: Tiny, sweet thing time!  Scheduled, daily tiny sweet, thing time.

And tiny, sweet things can be blogs, as Rupa brought to my attention.  Which means I get to put my dear bloggette on the tiny, sweet thing list!  With tiny, sweet thing scheduled time!

And, following on with this – if my dear bloggette could be a thing, with scheduled, daily thing time… then what else in my life could get scheduled, daily thing time?

My Shiva Nata practice, for sure.  Learning the sequences to teach them.  And language learning!  Because even if I don’t want to teach language per se, it inspires me – it’s also about patterns and therefore relevant to everything else I’m interested in teaching – and it’s a creative dream of mine. And all creative dreams are important and are most definitely candidates for thing time.

Today was the second day of scheduled tiny, sweet thing time, and I cannot begin to describe the awesomeness of not being paralysed.  I’m enjoying this.

This post is dedicated to tiny, sweet things everywhere, to Rupa, and to Havi.

Comment Zen

Adorations to everyone reading!
If you’d like to leave a comment, I’d love to connect with you in this small spark of a way.

My comment zen is adopted (and slighty adapted) from Havi: As always, no advices unless requested, please! This is a letting people have their experience space, and also a taking responsibility for our stuff space – which is about creating safe space.  Adorations again!

P.S. It has been brought to my attention (thank you, Shanna!) that my comment link is, though aesthetically appealing to my eye, somewhat pitiful discreet. If you’re wondering, it’s that little grey speech bubble icon up by the post title.

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