Blog 09: Toward what calls
Toward what calls is a direction that often instills trepidation, an uneasy suspicion of a future that beckons to be better yet alludes material explanation. Intuition is often discredited in the world of five-year plans and careers with benefits. The world of traditional stability often—though not always—ignores the inner voice, betrays it with contracts and social expectation. Yet I have continually tried my best to do what felt right. If it meant dropping out of school twice, so it was. If it meant starting and shortly after, ending, a tattoo apprenticeship, I did. If it meant finding myself in art and literature, I painted and wrote and read, consistently in rhythm with that inner voice that lapped along the shores of my impassioned heart, day after day. And I did not care who disapproved of the means to whatever end, after all, it was my life, and it was unrelentingly finite.
Someone once told me, as I recorded in my notes app in 2018 (it’s important to collect sentimental writings, letters, or anything handmade), “I always admired how free you were. You didn’t care about what other people thought and just did what you wanted to. That’s why I liked talking to you so much”. Now there is a level of privilege in being physically able to “do what you want to do” to an extent, but doing so does not come without its own challenges, most often the manifestation of disappointment, worry, or shame from those around you. Financial instability. Failure. Unstructured malaise. I began to feel a pervading unease brewing in those close to me, that maybe they were worried I would throw away my imposed golden-child potential somehow. I would argue that it is not possible to waste potential if one is following their dreams, no matter how it may look from the outside. I would also argue that middle child syndrome makes you too stubborn and independent to allow such a thing to happen anyway, but that’s beside the point.
It is one of the most fulfilling things in the world to honor yourself, to remain in alignment with what you want even when it feels unrealistic or naive. That is one of the joys of living. That is faith.
So, in returning to my aligned self and going toward what called to me, along with wanting to be an artist and writer, I also always wanted to live by the ocean. So has my mother. And I have continually felt that pull deep within me, though I could never give a “better” reason than love for it. It is the default vacation destination for a reason. The ocean is, in many ways, a paradise of the senses.
We are all meant, in some capacity, to be near water. We are mostly made of it, the earth is mostly made of it, and we do–surprise!–need it to survive. Most populous cities gather along it, peopled in droves, piled on shoreline to get a front row seat to the promise-water (even as we inevitably sink to our doom under rising sea levels in happy ignorance). Regardless, is water not the proverbial “view”?
Ever since I could drive in the later days of high school, my friends and I would go down to the river. We would bask in the sun, swim, and climb rocks, unfearing and on top of the world. Then I continued to go to the water, moreso alone, time and time again, year after year. I felt calmed by it. When I was frustrated, lost, confused, or just restless, I would find a trail that led to water. In Fredericksburg, it was the Rappahannock or the Ni, in Newport News and Richmond it was the James.
So, a ritual was formed.
In order to fully experience “going to the water”, I decided that it was most fun to first cross a threshold by taking a trail to it if I could. I didn't want to just park at an overlook, it was not removed enough from the road to warrant my desired solitude, or the more wholesome experience of nature without noise or asphalt beneath my feet. I decided it was best to take a long walk, to begin to enter a headspace of peace with birds chirping, rustling leaves, and that freshness of air only achieved in an abundance of living foliage. That walk becomes a flow state, a kind of meditation.
I found that it was in that headspace, when I finally reached the water, smelled it, and heard its waves and gentle licks at the shore, I was calm and I was free. I would find a place to sit, then, and watch its ripples, the birds, the insects. The way light sparkled on its surface like magic. I would put my hands in the cool sand and it would feel good. Maybe I would skip rocks. Maybe I would pick a flower to press for later. Whatever gifts arose, they were good. And they were free.
It’s as simple as that. That love of water called me to live alongside a beach, at some point, somewhere, as a simple and inevitable prophecy of my life. I have since, by complete synchronicity in a domino effect of opening doors and loving friendship, found that place, down by that mother water, the Atlantic. And I have moved there. And I feel my elusive intuition shining, and I trust that I should always continue to go toward what calls.
For yourself, I say go toward what calls. What’s the best that could happen?
