Written by Natalie Fraser
When we travel, there's an implied sense of direction: we are leaving from somewhere and arriving somewhere else. These somewheres are usually seen as real; solid; easily identified with a place-name printed on signs at station, on maps, on tickets.
But what about the metaphorical qualities of somewheres?
What about those of us who are travelling in space and time without such an easily identified sense of leaving and arriving? Those with an intuitive sense that there was no clear beginning, anymore than there will be an obvious end.
Existential Offerings has existed in this flux for some time now, swishing through the gusts of life, blown by the winds of the places and people it finds along the way. Frustrated occasionally by no obvious time and place to begin it's various chapters.
But slowly this project grows. It grows organically as it learns not what it wants to be offering, but what people need it to offer.
As a community, as a resource, as a safe space. For learning, laughing; for long angry rants and light-hearted discussions.
It has recently dawned on me that once we accept the flux, we no longer question the why, we simply experience it.
It is the human condition to exist somewhere upon the somewhere-nowhere-continuum. At times we experience this as deeply settled, very clear in our mind that we are in the 'right' place at the 'right' time. Things feel stable, the goings on seem to make sense. There is a reassuring predictability of the ticking clock and we have faith that the next moment will hold something that fits appropriately into the story of our life.
At other times, perhaps more frequently for many, there is a sense that something is not quite right. Trapped in memories, we become our own resident ghost, haunting our present with deep and problematic thoughts and feelings related to past challenges we've been forced to face. This has been called 'rumination'. Alternatively, we may become thrown into the distinctly unpredictable but very realistic seeming potentials of our future, our vibrant imagination working diligently to develop worse-case scenarios and trying them on for size. This has been called 'anxiety'.
These states of mind, ways of being in flux with resistance, cultivate a sense of mistrust. A mistrust in our story, in our selves. These are such powerful, profound sensations that they can quite easily take over. They're the perfect distraction! A distraction from the here and from the now and from the fact that... quite probably... everything is "okay". It may have been much better, it has possibly also been worse before too. But right here, right now, is your time. It always is. Wherever you are on the somewhere-nowhere-continuum of your life is rightfully yours. It will do you no good to resist that, so I suggest that you embrace it and watch the internal peace unfold.
Whatever path you are currently on, trust in the journey, let yourself be swept up by the winds of the world, and have faith that when you land you will make the best of what you find.
Today, an Existential Bubble. Tomorrow... Who knows!
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