Solo Path

"Why these damn tears!?" I yelled through sobs, frustrated at the streams running down my face.
"You're a crier, always have been," she replied matter-of-factly.
 I laughed, because it was just that simple- and true. I was speaking with a mentor on my goals, stumbling blocks, and the revelations that come when you speak slowly, and a wiser person listens intentionally. She knows me well. Tears are a release- of whatever is locked inside. They  sometimes come when I have waited too long- as emotional bursts- rather than in the steady, cleansing breaths she later taught me to make a daily habit. I teared up thinking about writing this post. Tears ran down my face last night when I opened up to a new possible mentor (you can find them everywhere if you're open to growing) about my life path. Tears are nothing to be ashamed of, although I do regret the discomfort it causes others who don't understand them.They are something I have learned to love and accept about myself and my unique way of traversing this life. If I'm crying I'm feeling, and if I'm feeling I'm living. Don't worry, as a dear friend once noted, my tears turn to laughter and back again just as easy, that's just a fact of me.

I also love searching faces. It's a habit I've always had, and it comes in quite handy working in retail, but also in life. I love smiling first and cracking a worried or shy brow, and then watching a smile bloom on a stranger's face. It's an energy exchange, and can sometimes be just enough to affect a mood, an outlook, a day, even a life. Sometimes it's theirs, almost always, it's mine. My beliefs on energy are still evolving, but I have come to believe you attract the energy you emit. Kind of like the saying, only boring people get bored. Or perhaps, you generate an energy, and it can touch another and effect them, and mirror back to you. When I was an angrier, more confused person, I found every furrowed brow to be another angry, confused person. Now, as I look into a sea of faces, I see many thoughtful, searching faces looking back at me. I see hopeful smiles, dream filled eyes, lesson-lined faces.

 Yesterday, while searching faces in a coffee shop, I stumbled upon a person I knew of, but until then had no personal interactions with, and chose to ask him a question about my business. Or, to put it more honestly, I walked up to his table uninvited, introduced myself, sat down, and launched into a series of questions about a business issue that had been troubling me. Shy, I am not, and rarely have I been accused of beating about bushes for the sake of cautious uncertainty.  I had always thought him an intriguing person that I'd like to know, but never had a need or opportunity to speak to him, until yesterday. My one question spurred hours of conversation about my and his career paths, life stories, and provoking questions as to where I am headed now.

I can be a messy jumble to listen to when I first find an attentive ear, and he echoed what other wise people in my life have admonished- "Slow down and listen- quiet yourself and hear what's already being spoken inside. Stop searching so hard for answers and they will come, or are already there. Your motion is stationary spinning; be still, and you will move forward."

I have a plan this year, with pieces steadily falling in place as I set my mind to them. I'm going to write for small farms and veteran owned businesses involved in regenerative agriculture. In March I'm doing a resident apprenticeship on a friend's farm to learn heritage livestock breeding and an artistic trade- to be revealed later if I'm any good at it! I have plans and ideas to improve and grow my gardening service. At the end of this growing season, I'm trading my car in for a van to convert for living, working, and travel. They are all very ambitious goals, and ambition is something I have never lacked. But they are not easy goals, mostly because I will do them by myself for myself.

That was where the tears brimmed yesterday as I shared my realizations about my path. For so long, I had myself convinced I needed others to make my dreams possible. I wrote a partner into every long term plan, and I let my dreams crack when I severed relationships. For as I look back, I severed every tie I ever sought to make. Each time, I found that adding a person to my plan only caused energy to drain from, not add to it. Yet as an embodiment of Einstein's definition of insanity, I continued to make space for others in my dreams.

This year, I move forward knowing that my dream is made just for these hands to hold, and as it grows, I will grow with it and gain the strength to carry it to fruition. Will there be short term energy exchanges that fuel me when traveling through rough terrain? Without a doubt. Will I continue to look for faces in the sea of people to share a moment of reflected sunlight? How could I not?  Will my tears and breaths continue, understood or not, and carry me forward one well-placed step at a time? This I can assure you; and as I walk, though I be a solo traveler, I can assure myself- I am never alone.