Have you ever had one … an invisible year?
You know, a series of weeks or months that seem to keep you in one place, no matter how much you jump on them. It can give you the blues; especially during winter when the sun is less available for instant joy. We know very well that we do not waste our time. We know that we use it to dream and strategize, to take courses and plan a little more. As a result of our efforts, we now discover that we have created things we never dreamed of just a year ago, and we realize that we somehow became adept at skills that, until very recently, we had discovered.
… And yet, it seems that our daily activities remain more or less the same, in reality they have not changed more than a hair. The dream program that we feed on a daily basis according to the best-selling rules of “The Secret” still lives primarily on our calendar. Suddenly it seems to us that we are involved in essentially the same activities that we had been doing all along, and the wind suddenly dies away from our rose-colored sails. We feel aware that we are still trying to figure out what our next move should be, and we vehemently repeat to ourselves that the endless phase of trial and error is as essential (to our path to success) as it is seemingly immortal.
We managed to stay insanely busy cutting into our Mount Rushmore’s staff. And when we are not tearing it apart, we are in shock at its sheer magnitude. Sometimes it seems like we are carving our own brand out of a mountain of granite using a small chisel and some polishing paper. We just can’t wait to see it finished, can we? We spend precious energy resources preparing ourselves from the noise and dust of our own compulsive (oh, I mean disciplined) activities, we refuse to remember where we really started. It seems too early in our journey for a congratulatory break, so go ahead and hope it makes us brave.
Although many of us started with a thought that sounded something like, “You’ve got to be kidding me! There’s no way I’m climbing that thing. I don’t even like heights. Forget it!” We forget about this because we are so caught up in our dream that it now seems to have little consequence.
Then, one crucial day, an Epiphany (accompanied by its own coir, naturally) broke its long silence and said clearly: “Actually, you want to climb a mountain, and here it is!” Our old way of thinking now seems so incidental compared to everything we think we are in the moment the mountain has been revealed. Any praise break seems premature at this point, particularly when we surround ourselves with successful mentors and teachers. It seems silly though, doesn’t it?
The first thing any self-respecting mentor would say is: “Destiny is wherever you are. Anywhere else is really nowhere else.” So if we want to affect some outcome (or destiny) that is intended to move us away from where we are now, we can still do it only from here, AKA … where we are now. Plan everything we want, a plan is still like the intelligence of the Government; subject to change and pending more information. The only difference is that we are a little older. Isn’t it scary to think about how much of our lives we spend just planning things that we rarely do the way we planned them, and that’s if we do them at all? I wonder what that time will be like in terms of years.
These are what I call invisible years. They seem to evaporate into the air and in a non-refundable past time. We can hope that it is true that any change we have endured in such a year was in fact internal; educational, broadening of our mind and maybe even wisdom maker, buzz?
So what is my point? … Just these few:
1. Invisible years are never wasted. They make us grow vertically (deeply).
2. Try not to plan and re-plan many times before you start and do it.
3. Remember that you’ve already gotten somewhere, so what you do from here is entirely about what you can do from here.
4. Embrace the “meaning.” Look within and find the truth introspectively.
5. The invisible years are the makers of wisdom. Find the pearl in them that others would not see and assess their true value to you.
When tea is carefully prepared, we say it is ready and perfect to drink. And yet what has changed? It’s still just leaves and water.
As we go through life, it has a way of ‘soaking’ us, just like a unique and mysterious tea is steeped in hot water. We break free from the rigidity of youth and become deeper, richer, more filled with a kind of knowledge that we could only intellectualize about before, but still cannot identify what that is, even when we are old. . We grow both in breadth and depth. The first is recognizable to others by the distance we travel at a certain speed, while the second occurs when it seems that we are standing still. Depth occurs even when stillness is against the will of our compulsive achiever. All we have to do is look for it.