I am struggling with a major issue at the moment, I was about to call a close friend whose advice I really value, but I did not. I went for a walk despite the driving rain. Rather than tilt my head downwards to protect myself from the wind and rain, I zipped my rain jacket up to my neck and turned my face towards the sky as I would on a sunny day. Embrace the rain I thought to myself, accept it rather than turning away from it. What is so bad about lovely fresh rain on my skin anyway – actually much better than the drying sun which simply ages it.

With my head tilted to the grey cloudy sky and my stride lengthening, I walked confidently as I embraced the weather conditions as they were, not as I wanted them to be.

After a while, I sat on a bench facing the sea, the rain stopped and the sun was trying its best to break through the heavy cloud cover. I watched the monstrous waves crash and disperse on the shore pulling the pebbles back into the sea before forming and crashing again. Crash and disperse, crash and disperse, each moment completely unique, pebbles thrown around, scattered, bumped, bashed, rearranged.

I watched the waves as I tried to figure out what to do next. The answer wasn't obvious. I was looking too hard. I was looking for the waves to answer my question, but they simply rolled in and out oblivious to my conundrum and needs.

I don't have a solution right now to my present predicament, but the more I search for one, the more elusive it becomes and the more tangled my thinking gets. I go round and round in my spaghetti mind getting more and more frustrated and further away from that which I seek.

The answers come when the questions cease and so I stopped looking for a solution. I stopped trying to make something happen. I stopped trying to figure out the best thing to do. I stopped berating myself for having got to where I am. I stopped being annoyed with myself for not knowing what to do next.

I stopped.

There is no point in my looking outwards for a solution, in looking to others to solve my problems and provide answers. No one knows better than me what is right for me and if I don't know, how on earth can anyone else know?

The best gift I can give to myself is to be able to know what to do when things are tumultuous and that might simply be nothing at all but ride it out. To be the pebble, tossed around and accept where I land. Is it not all this bashing around afterall that smooths and polishes the pebble taking away its hard jagged edges?

The waves were teaching me something afterall, I just didn't know it at the time.

Millie

A Moodscope member.