Drifting To Where, Exactly?
What did the drift reveal that busyness had been hiding?
It's 8 weeks since Dad died.
In the days and weeks that followed friends got in touch, checked in. Appreciated.
In that time though, a veil descended. Almost invisible, the shape and hue of the days outwardly normal, but somehow a little life less. Or a little less life. Subtly fixed, contained. A little less wriggle room of heart and mind.
The days rolled on.
Rolling on and less happening all at the same time; dressed as normal - meetings, coaching, calls, kids, exercise - but running on an auto pilot game play; lacking stick, traction, punch.
Drift by other names.
The alternative to drift is striving: working hard, being busy, racing only forward and away. Striving feels like movement, progress and accomplishment - which it can be. But it’s a mask too, a different kind of veil, gently shielding the otherwise dark underbelly of our rawest soul, the places we don't like to go, but might be driving the bus.
In my drift, i stopped turning up for the network I tend to and organise, LeanMind (busy as they are, did they even notice?).
I stopped feeding it, talking to it, thinking about. I grew separate.
I still tried selling it to new members a few times, with little effect.
In the drift, all is revealed. The habits, stories, worries we don’t like but might have a hand on a tiller.
In the drift, questions circle:
Why am I doing that?
Or not doing that?
Why does that keep repeating?
Is this important?
Why do I not care?
What am I scared of?
Am I walking round and round and getting nowhere?
Jung said it nicely, suggesting that life might sometimes back us against a wall, not to punish us, but to force our growth. The only way over isn't through effort, but through becoming larger than the wall itself, reaching, maybe, into the discomfort.
This is what my drift was telling me.
Whilst the veiled days were populated by striving activities: selling to prospects, thinking about the future journey, being in touch with members, talking, thinking, playing, doing, it was being done with a little less life, a little less care. And in this, the veil reveals.
Under the glad rags of my day to day was a nervousness, a persistent worry:
Maybe it’ll all fall apart.
Maybe it’s not very useful.
What the fuck is it anyway?
And in the falling apart, so the story goes, a paralysing helplessness.
Shame at my failing.
Leaving me powerless, unable to pay what I owe.
Nowhere to turn.
No help to be had.
Wearing only the clothes of what felt important to me amounting to not very much at all.
This is what the drift revealed.
Action rooted in nervousness, an avoiding of a deep lying helplessness. That I’m prone to filling the day with tasks - from scrolling to doing - to keep these fears away rather than embrace the full spirit of what I most want to do.
This what the drift reveals.
That underneath my own striving is a fear, a nervousness, a restlessness, an unworthiness, and occasional feeling of not very good-ness. This is what this particular drift was telling me: to make friends with these pesky bedfellows: the unworthiness, the worry, the insecurity. They too part of the otherwise brilliant and funny tapestry (obvs) that is Ben.
The drift hadn't revealed a problem with LeanMind.
It had revealed a fear.
A familiar one.
That perhaps I'm not enough.
That perhaps the work isn't enough.
That perhaps it will all come to nothing. I will come to nothing.
Busyness keeps these voices moving.
Drift sits them down beside you.
Whether you like it or not.
Hello, chum.
A little ask from me to you. Please share this with a friend. Someone who might want to hear it. Scrap that, worry not. Just send it.