As we come up on a year of quarantine in Los Angeles - and a full year since I put in notice at my old ~corporate~ job / career - I find myself reflecting often on what the passing of time has meant in my life. As a chronic & recovering overachiever, I have spent a lot of my life manufacturing deadlines, goals, milestones: neat little packages of achievement that have doubled as a quick way to assess my self-worth.
Imagine a closet full of unopened presents - stacked neatly, yet precarious. For a long time, everyday I would think to myself - what is missing from my beautiful closet? What do I need next? What will make people say - WOW, now that's an impressive closet!!! As if there was the perfect little package out there that would make it all worth it. As if looking outward would make me feel whole.
And it wasn't enough to simply accrue the packages - I had to have them NOW. Yesterday, in fact. It wasn't just about the contents of the closet. It was about how quickly I could assemble them - how impressive a list I could accrue for a young woman my age. Time was simply another way of measuring my worth.
Though this may seem bleak, I had really convinced myself collecting achievements was my superpower. That gathering wrapping paper, the right box, a beautiful bow (e.g. all the learning, the setbacks, the discovery) was what life was about. Doing it quickly simply allowed me to do MORE. There was really nothing like arriving at the final product - that championship, test score, nomination, job offer or promotion. For an actor - getting the audition, callback, booking....applause.
I'd be lying if I said I don't still yearn for these achievements, these little packages, these moments of external validation stacked up in my closet. What I am beginning understand, however, is this: inside these little, unopened packages live big, powerful gifts. Gifts I have been collecting for years, gathering dust in my proverbial closet.
This past year has gifted me the opportunity to shut out some of the external - placed very real limits on, say, what wrapping paper & cardboard boxes are available to my person. I have, instead, been given the time to look inward - to dig through what I already have - what lives in my closet. As I discover & unearth the gifts I have tucked away in the past, I also see that many of them no longer hold meaning. What once could have been a very precious possession, now, five, ten years later, is but a trinket.
I meet you today with two commitments:
1) to let go of those trinkets (and their associated packaging) that no longer serve me
2) as I bring new packages into my home, I vow to open them immediately. to enjoy the gifts now and let them affect my soul. then, and only then, will I make room for the next