Study hard from the heart, Lot!

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”

Richard Feynmann

So, I long for those days. All closed in by a wall of books; an assemblage of beautiful minds that captured the sensorial input of their wondering bodies on an always curious paper, now readily available for my cognitive, intensely engaged exploration, a deep dive that altered the current of my own oceanic depths. Learning with a splendid ferocity was just an outcome of ‘normal’ passion coinciding with values, and external pressures that felt like momentum. Yet, existential unrest tinted the last couple of years, some of the eager passion became tougher along the years due to internalized power structures with respect to individualistically running a company, security took over ‘openness to experience’ as a guiding value, and I did not listen to the intuition telling me to look somewhere else, to create with, instead of against uncertainty. Motherhood was born and many desires of those directly surrounding me organized my everyday life. I flirted with some secondary interests but already knew this was not my energy, not my flow, I did not fully embrace my values, legitimizing the truthfulness of my fears by referring to the needs of my environment. I problematized a lot of my own tendencies, sorted out whatever seemed indeed baggage, did emotional work to overcome challenges rooted in childhood struggles. And still, here I find myself having the same intuitions.

Something feels liberated now. An amount of energy otherwise invested in another’s approval, another’s path that is, if I am radically honest, too small to process the expansion of my own journey, has been liberated and is finding its way back to the intuition nested in my stomach. Thanks to the embodied experience of motherhood, my pelvis offers two imagined, generous hands to rest this intuition upon. A dear colleague reminds me not to be afraid of criticism, which to me also means not seeking asylum on another’s path. She is right, I must take a step forwards, process the possible stings of rejection on the level of agency, slowing down my emotional pace as I speed up my intellectual study, and reach out creatively in a potentially stinging social field.

This time, the calling is not grandiose, it is a fortifying whisper freeing me from the chains of projections, if only I direct my listening to her breeding place, a place so well-known by our beloved daughter.

The days I long for are, thanks to that same last couple of years, enriched by beautiful collaborations, unpresented, embodied mirroring on an emotional and intellectual level, an ongoing practice of deepening relationships that is quite scary at times, the biggest joy of life greeting us every morning, a deeper appreciation of and immersion in community life, more frustration tolerance due to a thousand little familial challenges, and wonderful teachings in existential skills. Logically, this is the moment to open the inner door to those patiently waiting intuitions. Study hard from the heart, Lot! Never to forget to look up and allow the sky to guide you to a space unknown.