Destination: Here

Living in the...(*checks notes*)...moment. An essay in support of shameless lollygagging.

Lately, when we’ve been on car trips for anywhere over an hour, I’ve noted a huge desire in me to just keep driving.
I’ve suddenly become desperately averse to arriving anywhere.

If it’s night and the kids are asleep in the back, I try to convince Jarrod to keep driving past the house. Not in any particular direction. Not up the coast, or towards the mountains. I just want to continue being carried. Staring out the window. Dreaming in the moonlight.

To be still.
To have no expectations.
No responsibilities.
Nowhere to be but here.

Everyone wants to know what’s next.
When you’re in school, they want to know what you’ll do when you leave.
Then where you’ll study.
Then when you’ll travel.
Then when you’ll get married.
Then when you’ll have kids.
Then when you’ll have more kids.
Then suddenly when you’ll be back at work.
When you’ll expand the business.
Or buy a home.
Or renovate.

Within 6 weeks of birthing Halo, people were asking me when I was heading back to work. I usually stuttered because the question caught me so off guard.
I just got here, I thought. Why on earth would I be thinking about being somewhere else?
At that point, I was still hoping to have 5 to 7 kids, so I had mentally set aside at least 20 years for this!

As a kid, I had very big dreams for what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I didn’t allow myself much mental rest. I didn’t leave much space for actual living, in many ways.
I had tunnel vision.
I was determined.
‘Motivated,’ you might say. (Which can be just like keeping up with the Joneses, but personal development version.)
Constantly wanting for more. Living with one foot in a different time.

I was stimulated by these beautiful futures I could imagine, but was absent from the moment I was in. Blind to the wonder of everything around me.

Motherhood to me, has been a deeply necessary therapeutic stillness.
Of course, I have values I’m constantly refining. Goals and ideas and dreams I’m slowly building, both in the home and out.
But I’m here.
And I have no intention of being anywhere else anytime soon.
It’s been so freeing for me. I had built an identity in pursuing, chasing and attaining…

If you’ve been in or around the entrepreneurial space for any length of time, you’ve probably been accosted with the idea of ‘levelling up.’ But life isn’t Super Mario.
And the adrenaline of the chase is likely a large factor in what’s leaving us all so exhausted.

For once in my life, I’m not trying to level up.
I’m settling in.
Enjoying the ordinary moments of my every day.
Finding my satisfaction in internal growth rather than external growth.
Or even…sometimes not.
Not being my best self or my higher self…but just being my current self.
Not changing empty toilet rolls. Making consistently crappy watercolour pictures. Being overstimulated with any more than 1 noise at a time. Snacking right before dinner. Not drying myself properly when I get out of the shower and then complaining that it’s, ‘freezing in here!’ Putting chai on the stove, forgetting and burning it. Putting anything on the stove and forgetting and burning it. (Shouldn’t there be robots for this by now?!?) Refusing the notion that any of it needs to be fixed. (Plus there’s a small but not insignificant chance Jarrod secretly thinks my toilet roll negligence is adorable. Flirting 101. Subscribe for more relationship advice.)
Not looking for the next thing to feel successful, but successfully regulating my body to be present here.

The car trips? They’re one of life’s beautiful metaphors.
Not wanting to arrive anywhere. Being content on the journey.
Trusting that despite my stillness, I’m still moving.

I’m trying out some of this ‘living in the moment’ business.
With both feet planted firmly on the present earth beneath me.

I have no idea what’s for dinner.
Or when we’ll buy a home.
Or when I’ll act again.
I have no idea if I will ever taste un-burnt chai.

But I’m fine.
I think we’ll all be fine.
A little inner rest never hurt anyone.

We’ll be fine.
We’re still being carried.
Our futures won’t dissolve, I’m sure of it.

A little less motivation, a little more laying in the sunshine.
A little less hustle, a little more lollygagging.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.

Let’s all get hammocks! Who’s in?

x
Lysette