Inhabit Your/Our New Future:

“You ain’t never gonna be who you used to be,” said Baggar Vance, the wise teacher disguised as a caddy, to Junuh, the passion-zapped golfer, in the book and film by Steven Pressfield, The Legend of Baggar Vance. 
 
You ain’t never gonna be who you used to be, either. And that’s a good thing. 
 
Sometimes we hover in the safety, the busyness, the stress, and familiarity of what is because we don’t actually believe in a greater future. It’s easy to look back at something we perceived as better and aim for that. It’s easy to whirl in the eddies of our current goodness and hang onto it. It’s easy to stay focused on the everyday responsibilities of where we are and wear blinders to our greater future.
 
There’s nothing to go back to. But there is a brilliant new future to move into if we learn to inhabit now, in this moment. There isn’t a future that is separate from us. We are that future in whomever we choose to become now.
 
I’m laughing at the realization of synchronicity that as I put the finishing touches on this week’s Monday Wisdom, I have taken down my old website this morning for good. While a new website is conceived and built, there is a simple placeholder page and I feel exhilarated!
 
I admit, sometimes I love the feeling and exhilaration of cleaning things out and getting rid of the old, as much or more as I do bringing in something new. Moving forward, though, isn’t discarding the old way. Ideally, the new way is inclusive of the old even while the old becomes imperceptible. 
 
The old way becomes perfect, or complete, so that something brilliantly new can take its place.  
 
What is it we hold on to, anyway? Something practical, something useful, a way others have always related to us, a way of recognizing ourselves, something that represents who we used to be a moment ago? A couple decades ago? 
 
The new that waits for us may not be obvious. It may be awaiting discovery like a treasure in the current hassles, losses, projects, intentions, routines, ambivalence, abundance, blessings, and conversations. We may not realize our subtle ways of holding back or staying comfortable.
 
Your future already exists. Have you been able to feel the buzz of it yet in your core? One of my favorite Monday Wisdoms that I wrote a few years ago is: 
 
The future is your reference point.
 
With the future as your reference point, whatever must crumble on the way there, will do its best for you. It’s up to you, though, to let go. To be awake. To be intentional.
 
We become the future we inhabit in the present moment. 
 
Often times when someone passes away, it is not they who hold onto us. It is we who hold onto them. Unfinished business. Beautiful memories. Aching bitterness and anger. The love and touch. 
 
It is in the releasing, the energetic transformation, that we feel the new connection with them, with a future without them here in physical form. Grieve we must, without regard to time. It’s a sacred recognition of what once was, what wasn’t and what will not be. As well as the opening to what will be. Hanging on is unnecessary.
 
In the movie above, Junuh at first tries to move forward, to begin golfing again, on his old wave of self and success after the ravages of war. But that self died and to find his new swing, he’s got to let go of who he was pre-war. This is a self he hasn’t known yet, who cannot be defined by previous pain or success or love, and often can only be felt while he moves forward into it.
 
All our futures hold that self we haven’t yet been, who is beyond our imaginations. And to become that self, we must take off our blinders, anything we’re holding onto, and trust in a future we may not yet see with our physical eyes, yet is vibrantly alive in the core of our being.
 
Moving forward without letting go is like trying to clean a sink with a clogged drain. The sink only fills up with both the soap and the dirt. Clear the clog and the new flows through in continual renewal.
 
What presents itself to be done in this moment, to connect with that greatest possibility and move things forward, may seem ridiculously simple; to stop believing in an old way before a new one can arrive. Take down an old website before a new one is built. Change a routine built for yesterday’s optimum. Give away things you own from yesterday’s life. Make a phone call. Make amends. Write a contract. Set a boundary. Visit a friend. Stop buying into the fear. Affirm what you desire instead of what you don’t. 
 
Tell your story from your future. Then watch what takes its place.
 
It’s true. We’re not going back after Corona Time. After websites. After relationships. After death. After beginnings. After illness. After healing. After routines. After birth.
 
And that’s a good thing, because having nothing to go back to is what allows new energy, vitality, ideas, joy, and wisdom to rush in.
 
Let’s make room for it. Let’s inhabit our futures now.

Here’s to more of You in the world, 

Shelley