Like a river flows
on not wisdom-ifying your life
Human Stuff is a weekly-ish newsletter. Please feel free to share parts of this letter that connect with you, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, sharing, commenting, subscribing, for being here. It means something.
A song I’m loving:
“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
This is one of my favorite sentences from the beloved John O’Donohue, one that feels like both the raft and the guide. Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding. Living like a river flows. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much life happens outside of writing, beyond the confines of what I can or want to share. I’ve been moving through my own tender unfolding, attempting to be carried by the surprise of it… and finding it so incredibly hard to put into words.
More honestly, I’ve been finding it incredibly hard to always try to find the words, instead of just allowing the experience. The ineffability of being a person seems in contrast with our highly-online culture: how do we make space for the mystery, grief, and beauty of an unfolding life to exist without simplifying it, without distancing ourselves from it by trying to make it shareable, without assuming it must be shared or wisdom-ifyed to be real and significant? How do we decide what we want to find the words for, what we want to capture — and what is meant to remain only in the heart, in the energy of our quiet life, in the realm of our own spirit? How do we let life surprise us if we’re always trying to fit it into a word count, a photo, a retelling?
I feel this tension sometimes as someone who writes a public newsletter and has shared online for the last seven years, and as someone currently writing my second book. There is both the gift of sharing: the resonance, the being of service, the connection, the creative expression, the learning and unlearning, the threads of “me, too” that get woven when I choose to share, the balm of meaning-making, the offering of my heart’s work — and then there’s the impulse that has replaced spaciousness, the pressure to find the nuggets within an experience, the ever-present “should I share this?” question lingering as I photograph an open road or have a personal revelation, the annoyance of meaning-making, the urgency to find the words already, the closeness of a readership/following/audience that makes true privacy feel difficult, even when I am alone. I’ve learned I am someone who both deeply enjoys sharing and feels hindered by it. I have a depth of gratitude for all writing brings me, and at times a quiet pocket of resentment for the ways it has shaped my brain away from knowing how to be as present as I’d like to be, from always keeping sacred what is meant to be kept sacred, for giving space and time to what requires it.
“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
For a while, I thought I only wanted to write. In the space from my private practice as a therapist and the depths of early motherhood, writing felt like a raft of its own, carrying me to places I couldn’t seem to access without words. Writing helped me pin down what felt like an impossible confusion. In the last year, though, something has shifted. I long for places without words, for time marked wordless. I desire the depth of connection that happens off the page, outside of descriptors and language. I miss sitting with people in their own depths, being with the unfolding mystery that can only happen in relationship. I miss holding space in ways that can’t be replicated via a sentence, a vignette, a post. I’ve sought out more experiences no one knows I’m having. I yearn for more time with nature, in her energy I can never seem to pin down in an essay or poem. I crave the kind of spaciousness that can’t be rushed into a lesson or a pearl of wisdom, the kind of knowing that requires years and decades of patient tending… not weeks or months of rushing toward in order to be able to share in a journal or on a screen.
When I get rid of the pressure to write, to find the through-line, to figure out how to share something, I quite enjoy the process of being surprised by what unfolds, which can’t happen when I’m trying so desperately to understand and find words for it all. I enjoy not always kneading my life. I think there’s something important here, in this recognition that so much presence, aliveness, and wisdom comes from not seeking it in everything, or trying to force everything into its shape before it even forms — but from carving out enough space to simply allow it to enter when it arrives.
“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
I suppose what I’m trying to offer here, both to myself and to you, is this:
Permission to trust what is happening when you can’t seem to find the words.
Permission to take off your meaning-making hat and simply soften into the moment.
Permission to let what you love change shape, change output, change impact.
Permission to remember what brings you most alive, most here.
Permission to return to the work of your heart, even after taking space from it.
Permission to allow your life to be yours first, to be for you first.
Permission to gently notice where you’re undernourished by your own patterns.
Permission to let certain wisdom take decades to truly acquire.
Permission to shift the way you approach what you do, with care and love.
Permission to take a step back, take a beat, take a break.
Permission to let the audience in your head fade to the background.
Permission to serve your own aliveness before offering it up to others.
Permission to trust the mysterious unfolding instead of trying to pin it down.
Permission to stay with the unknowable instead of trying to know.
Permission to live out all your private experiences, just for you.
Permission to keep your most sacred moments and thoughts sacred.
Permission to show up differently than you have been, to evolve.
Permission to linger in the questions longer than you’re comfortable.
Permission to tend to your own process, your own inner world.
Permission to be carried by the surprise of your own unfolding.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
△ The shapes of grief by Christina Sharpe
△ How to feel invisible by J Wortham
△ Brittany Cooper’s nuanced analysis of the debate
△ The next novel on my to-read list
△ James Hollis on Pulling the Thread
△ Conflict is inevitable; how can we make it generative?
△ Looking back at summer film
With care,
Lisa
This reached me at just the right time, after a full on and tender week of living and not writing. Thank you so much Lisa for your most magical words and for the permission slips, which allowed for many realisations. I also love that John O’Donohue quote, thank you for the reminder xx
Someone told me earlier I can find meaning in everything, like it was a gift, this amazing thing.
But I do feel it is more like a reactive mechanism I got after living a childhood full of chaos, confusion, and stress. And maybe my urge to share every little detail may be an urge to feel seen and heard, needs that weren't met then.
The tension between joy and grief is real.