Dancing down the knife edge

I’m not sure if this counts as magic, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week… It’s not exactly a case of going with the flow because that suggests submitting to where life seems to be taking you. I have found that when I’m going the right way, coincidence, serendipity, luck, call it what you will, helps me put things together in ways that take me forward. When I’m not going the right way, it’s like walking through mud and climbing over slidey walls on a regular basis.

I have yet to pin down a good working definition of ‘right way’. I know it doesn’t automatically correspond to my assumptions about what I should be doing. I don’t really believe in an external conductor of reality who wants me to do some things and not others. Which mostly leaves me feeling that I have no idea what this really is or how it works. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that it does exist, and does work because I’ve dealt with it so many times. If I am going the wrong way, its all uphill and grindy and miserable and nothing works right. If I go the right way, things fall into place.

Not that the ‘right way’ can be defined as somehow easy. Its often mad
and challenging, hence the title. My best description of what it feels like to be going the right way, is to be dancing down the blade of a very sharp knife. One slip and it’s going to hurt like hell. The right way is more like tightrope than a path, and often seems to depend on putting together things that really I have no right to assume will come together. I had a period of this around leaving my last home and moving to the boat, and I got everything I needed sorted in the necessary time frame, and I danced the knife blade all the way. Losing my nerve results in the fall and the inevitable cuts. I’m reasonably convinced now that blind faith that I *can* both find and dance down the knife blades of reality when required, is pretty much essential for actually doing it, which means if I’m overwhelmed with depression or anxiety, I’ve got no chance. I won’t dare the knife dance, but the not daring tends to bring more of the grind and the uphill struggle. Apparently my life does not come with an easy option, or if it did, I missed the turning a very long time ago. Dance the knife, or push boulders up mountains… both are exhausting, but the knife edge is wild and exhilarating, and gets me places I should not get to be.

Being a lot like dancing down the blade of a knife, the knife option is inherently scary, a lot of the time. I’m sort of reconciled to that. A bit. I’ve come to the conclusion at any rate that I am not going to spend my life pushing any more irrelevant boulders up mountains than is strictly necessary. if I’m going to have challenges, I’d rather they be wild and of my seeking, and maybe have some point to them and be able to achieve something. When I can get into it enough to really dance down the knife with everything I have, unafraid and totally able to believe I can dance the knife blade, I make stuff happen. Things come to me. Things fall into place. The book I need, lands. The right information or person finds me. It may be simply that when I believe I can do it, I become able to see all the disparate things that can be pulled together to make something. It might just be a perception issue. That doesn’t make it any less magical.

… laces on dancing shoes…