There’s something about deciding to make a change that makes us think we should also know exactly what happens next. We want the plan. The timeline. Some reassurance that the decision we’re making is the right one and that if we take this first step, we’ll somehow know what steps two through ten are supposed to look like.
Most of the time, we don’t.
I kept thinking about that after sharing Kat’s story last week. The first time she went to Costa Rica, she thought she was going to kickstart a yoga practice that had gotten lost somewhere in the busyness of life. She couldn’t have known that the women she met there would eventually become part of something much bigger, or that years later, after losing Eric, she would return to that same community when beginning again meant something entirely different. She didn’t know what came next. She just went.
I think there’s something so freeing in that.
We’ve spent the past few weeks talking about beginning again. We’ve asked what we want more of, what we’re ready to stop carrying and what we might choose differently. Those are big questions, and sometimes asking them creates a strange pressure to have the answers immediately. Maybe we know we want something to change but don’t quite know what. Maybe we know we miss a part of ourselves but aren’t sure how to find our way back to it. Maybe we’re ready to begin again, but if someone asked what that actually means, we’d have no idea what to say.
I think that’s allowed.
Not knowing what comes next doesn’t mean we’re stuck. It doesn’t mean we haven’t thought hard enough or that we aren’t ready. Sometimes we simply haven’t lived the part of the story that gives us the answer yet.
Yoga asks us to be comfortable with that all the time. We unroll the mat without knowing exactly how the practice is going to feel that day. We may arrive feeling strong and discover we need to slow down. We may walk in exhausted and find energy we didn’t know we had. We lose our balance, adjust, take another breath and respond to what is actually happening instead of what we thought was going to happen. We don’t need to know the entire practice before we begin it, and maybe life can work that way too.
There have been plenty of times when I’ve wanted to see around the corner before I was willing to turn it. I wanted to know something would work before giving it my time. I wanted to know a decision was right before making it. I wanted some guarantee that letting go of one thing would lead directly to something better.
Life is rarely that cooperative.
Sometimes we make the decision with the information we have, then we take a step because it feels like the next right one. Sometimes we try something and discover it isn’t for us at all, and that doesn’t necessarily mean we chose wrong. It may simply mean we now know something we couldn’t have known before.
That’s another thing I’m beginning to understand about beginning again. It doesn’t require certainty. It requires participation. We can spend a lot of time waiting for clarity before we move, when sometimes clarity comes BECAUSE we moved. Maybe we take the class or make the call. We say yes to something we might normally turn down, or finally say no to something we’ve been doing out of obligation. We go somewhere we’ve never been, return to something we once loved, or leave a little room in the calendar without knowing exactly what we’re going to do with it. Then we pay attention to what happens, because not every first step becomes something extraordinary, and honestly, it doesn’t need to. Sometimes a yoga class is simply a yoga class. Sometimes the new thing doesn’t stick. Sometimes we change our minds. But then there is a moment when you get on a plane because you think you need a little more exercise and meet people who will one day help you through one of the hardest seasons of your life.
You couldn’t possibly have planned for that. You just had to go.
Maybe that’s enough to know today. We don’t have to have the rest of the year figured out or know exactly where this beginning leads. We don’t even have to be certain that the first step is the perfect one. We can take it, pay attention, and see what happens next.
Until then, here’s something to notice.
Where are you waiting to know the whole story before you’re willing to begin? What would happen if you only had to know the next step?