A few hours ago, my partner and I were talking about life choices and careers. I’m in the middle of changing mine. She is in the middle of changing hers. We both have dreams, aspirations, fears, hesitations, attachments, aversions. We both have boiling kettles in our subconscious, and sometimes we get a glimpse of how agitated our minds are. Amidst this agitation, it is easy to lose ourselves, to lose focus, and to ignore true understanding. When a boat is navigating an angry sea, the first instinct of the passengers is just to manage to stay on board.
One sentence was voiced during our conversation, in a most casual tone: “I’m afraid of defaulting, converging to the old me.”
And with this we sat for some time. Is defaulting really the same as converging? If anything, they are the complete opposite. One defaults to known patterns, known behavior, safe environments, habitual patterns of the mind. This is not convergence. One converges towards one’s true calling, love, a harmonious life, a free mind. Convergence is a process that takes time and effort to happen. Convergence is a process that requires learning (so many people like to call this “failures”, don’t ask me why 🤷♂️), patience, self-exploration and awareness, kindness and self-love, permission to try, permission to change your mind, permission to explore new paths. It is a process that requires accepting uncertainty, sitting with it for days, weeks, months, perhaps a lifetime (this I will be able to tell you only when I approach the end of mine). Convergence is for sure harder and more painful than defaults. But as the saying goes, “Did you know that, very often, the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are the same?”
May we all learn and experience the difference, for true understanding comes only through one’s own experience, and may we all achieve liberation from our defaults.
The Nemo Writer 