Outside my window, I see the bright blue desert sky and the remnants of the wildflowers that bloomed in blue chaos just a week ago. It's springtime in Arizona, the world is alive with change: besides the flowers blooming and dying, and the hummingbirds migrating, people are preparing for graduations and job transitions. Transitions, however beautiful and exciting, also evoke fear and anxiety.
There is a space in every moment - between breaths or between heartbeats - that when we pay attention, we find silence. You *know* that your next breath is coming. You *know* that your very next heartbeat is inevitable. And because you know, you don't worry.
Why do we have such a hard time with other transitions, then? Are other transitions more important than the next breath or heartbeat that ensures that you continue to live?
Over coffee yesterday, my friend Mike told me, "Sometimes you have to be willing to step out into nothing and trust that you will be caught by something." It reminded me of a scene in Indiana Jones' The Last Crusade, when Indy has to make a leap of faith into an abyss. When he steps out into the void, he finds foothold on an invisible bridge.
You can stand with your toes at the edge of the pool and refuse to jump. You can teeter on the edge of a trapeze platform and refuse to fly.
You also can stand at the edge of your life, paralyzed by fear and anxiety because you can't see what's going to happen next.
The challenge is to embrace that in-between space, to enjoy and even appreciate the not knowing what's going to happen next, to allow the anticipation to propel you further into your life, all the while trusting that there will be something -or someone- will catch you. With practice, you can experience the space in between your heartbeats and even in between your thoughts.
Why not catch those in-between moments of your life - the moments between awake and asleep, between one job and another, between one thought and another? There is peace in the pauses that life provides: get in the gap and see if you can feel it. And then trust that the Next Thing is going to be there to catch you.
Love + peaceful in-between thoughts,
Robyn
