"Be Where You Are" // Birdtalker -- Long Time, No See

Hello world! It has definitely been a minute since my last post. I'm not sure when and I'm not sure how... but my life this past year was so unbearably busy that I rarely felt like I had any time for myself. This might seem strange for someone who frequently checks in with their friends and family, who practices a lot of stillness and mindful meditation, or even someone who spends a lot of time sitting alone with their thoughts! But all of these "picture-perfect" aspects of myself are an illusion if it still meant that my 2020 was filled with too much chaos and noise. I am also fairly self-aware and have come to realize that when I try to fill my calendar with "all the things", I'm usually trying to cover up something beneath the surface. Whether that's anxiety, stress, or fear of what's to come, the feelings of control that I get when I'm planning my life down to a "t" feel comforting in the moment. However, if I have learned anything about myself in the past year and a half... it's that the idea that we can control anything that happens in our lives is our mind's biggest illusion. We have no control of what happens. The tethering to the stability and control that we think we have over our lives is also where disappointment and anxiety sink in over time. We must make conscious and small efforts daily to detach ourselves from our materialistic control... because if you're anything like me, control is an addiction that feeds on a negative feedback loop.

Plan, prepare, the thing happens, you feel satisfied for a bit, the fleeting happiness leaves your body... and then you're stuck feeling empty. Repeat.

I want to make it very clear that I still believe in planning to lead a productive and meaningful life. The key difference in planning to live and living to plan though comes with delineating how one wants to orient their goals. Are you planning your life around your big goals you want to accomplish? Are you allowing flexibility into your schedule and acknowledging that those goals might change over time? Or are you beating yourself up for not meeting the arbitrary deadlines that you set for yourself? Are you feeling burnout by your own high expectations to live some "grand" life? Living to plan becomes this constant treadmill race where you feel as though catching your breath means failure and failure means you are not worthy of giving yourself grace.

Growing into myself this past year and half and allowing myself to drop the illusion of control has not only been a healing practice for my mind, but its also been a freeing space for my body. Cyclical patterns that I would find myself hiding from friends and family that involved food, incessant working out, or chronically strained sleeping patterns all became very apparent in how they were not serving me. I started to be much more honest with myself. I started to tap back into how grateful I am to simply exist. Finally, I found this song -- "Be Where You Are" by Birdtalker. I had listened to a couple of Birdtalker's songs in the past, but when I came across this album (One) over winter break, my heart felt so warm and comforted by a lot of the themes. Below are some lyrics from "Be Where You Are" that particularly resonated with me:

"Have you been using all the noise
To avoid meeting your mess?
You don't have to work so hard.
Just stop and take a breath."

When I first listened to this song back in the winter, I cried. It was so true -- I had been using all the noise to avoid the mess that I was hiding behind! The noise was the planning, the illusion of control, the constant pleasing of other people, and the deep attachments that I had to material pleasures. The mess was my fragmented relationship with food, my lack of a social life because being vulnerable felt too daunting, and my warped version of happiness being boiled down to a fake smile in the mirror. And then --"You don't have to work so hard" -- truly an answer to my prayers. If someone would have told me back in high school that I didn't have to work so hard... that I could "just stop and take a breath", I'm sure I would be much further along in my journey towards finding peace and balance in my current life. Going and going 24/7 is not only exhausting but it's also suffocating. Robbing you of any joy in stillness, we have strangely normalized reckless ambition over steady and intentional work. Sometimes doing less means more. Coming back to your breath, reminding yourself that you are already enough, and stepping away from the constant "work" are three things that I allowed myself to start doing in 2021; my outlook on life has changed for the better. 

It's not easy, friends -- and it most certainly doesn't happen overnight. But I'm eternally grateful to have had this experience and grown into myself. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts and please check out Birdtalker's music! You won't be disappointed! :) 

With love,

Sarah