Growing

There is an art of letting go. The stress and pushing, the to-do lists, the nagging tension headache that seem to be almost impossible to get rid off - like a sesame seed lodged deeply between two teeth. Letting go and slowing down.

I lay back and stop holding my belly in. I assume most of us could stand to let that poor belly soften, as we suck in the gut, engage our core, stand with our back straight as an arrow. Let it relax for once, let it be. Your belly is okay, I promise. Feel it instead of seeing it. One hand lies steady right underneath my bellybutton. The skin feels warmer there, a welcome touch. The other hand covers my solar plexus. Not pushing, just resting. Breathing - but not your focused Ujjayi Pranayama breath, but a steady and soft rhythm that comes naturally, flows gently. Glows gently.

There is a pattern to the things I love, that I enmesh myself in, the interests I dedicate myself to almost obsessively. Passionately, to use a less intimidating word. Voraciously. When I was a wee lass back in Sweden, that passion was soccer. Never a natural talent, but a damn hard worker, I trained as often as I could, ran so hard I dry-heaved, always pushing harder, refusing to give up, constantly wanting to be better. Stronger. Faster. I did become pretty good towards the end, sometimes I was even picked to play on the A-team - but not very often. As badly as I wanted to be better than I was, being the best was not what kept me running.

Then, it was books. Rivers of books. I would swim across oceans of other writers’ thoughts, and end up on shores never imagined until then. Other world fascinated me, sometimes to the point of forgetting this reality, believing somewhere deep down that these world exist in a tangible way: “of course it all happened in your head, but why would that make it any less real?”. I do, however, realize that I will never actually visit Tralfamadore, Hogwarts, or learn to fly by forgetting to land.

That brings us to here. The past six years has been almost exclusively dedicated to theatre and the performing arts. I’m not a natural talent at this either, and that doesn’t matter one bit. I push, and I try, and I learn something new every step of the way. Loving the moments when something is created in a space that before held nothing - an untouched space, the held breath. I’ve spent thousands of hours every year since 2014 creating theatre, whether as an actor, director, or arts administrator, and I don’t regret a single second.

There is a pattern behind all these passions, a thread that weaves through them as delicately as a whisper, hidden underneath it all. It’s presence. It’s not an absence of the what-has-beens and the what-nexts, but a beacon that illuminates only one very specific point in time. The right here, right now. The present exists in that ungraspable instant between the second that has already passed, and the one that follows immediately after. It exists as a bridge, a passage between the unchangeable natures of past and future. Release your belly. Breathe.

All these passions somehow require you to be present, to be grounded in the moment; not hold on to mistakes and failures that have already passed, not assume what will come of the next shot, the next chapter, the next entrance. Leaving the guilt and embarrassment and worry, and accepting whatever is right here, right now.

There is a shift happening. I can feel it expanding as my palms grow warmer, my belly grows softer. Existing in the non-existing space between inhale and exhale. Slowly, something begins.