I promise I'll look better in hindsight

on language that shapes our reality

I’ve always felt drawn to autumn for its brisk and fleeting nature. Cast as the season of transition, time and time again, I’ve found myself relishing in its short-livedness, aspiring for my own state of flux to be as ephemeral. Craving a calendar date to mark its departure so that I could allow myself to soften into its alluring disorder.

Too much of my life has been spent longing for endings and new beginnings.

What has changed over time is my (somewhat) acceptance of the in-betweens. What hasn’t, is my relentless desire to control these periods — to latch on to a reality where my will functions as the sole protagonist in a character-driven plot — followed by a breadth of anguish in the reckoning that I am (still) not a puppet master.

I decided I needed to return to a place I had called home for four years — a space I had once imagined I would reside in longer, only to recognize in hindsight, that it was yet another transitional period of my life.

Coming back to Vancouver inevitably brings with it a bittersweet taste. Moving out of the city merely catalyzed a physical separation between me and a space — and yet, walking down routes the soles of my feet have memorized throughout the years or covering my mouth to hold in the loudness of my laughter sat next to the people I love whose lives carry on here, has the ability to bring me right back, even if for just a brief moment. What this place once presented me with was a new beginning, and though it brought with it some tough endings, what it has continued to offer even after my departure, was something far greater: perspective.

Stepping out of the airport, the scent of arrival delivered with it a somewhat daunting question: Does everything that comes to an end classify as a transitional period in hindsight? And since everything, at some point or another, must end, does that mean our entire lives are a series of transitions? While the answer to this crippling question is glaringly obvious, it also happens to be the kind of internal interrogation that sends me spiraling.

Paradoxically, creativity — writing, in particular — is the one space where I’ll let go of control and enjoy the process in its entirety. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott references advice given by E.L. Doctorow which I’ve clung to over the years:

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.”

With writing, it’s rare for me to not become completely absorbed and galvanized by the process itself. Even reflecting on this week’s newsletter, it began as something else entirely, as most of what I write typically does.

While I set out to write about a practice I use to self-soothe and even went as far as crafting a first draft, what kept coming up was an inclination to reflect on autumn. My first reaction is typically to dismiss it — to identify these nudges as random or trivial. The second is logical resistance — the voice declaring this pursuit a frivolous one. The “logical standpoint” is my least favourite, because it can often guise as a service to you — the service being a saving grace from shame and humiliation. I do give it credit for its ability to present its arguments well — so well that I can always see its point of view. Even now, I recognize the deep level of irony that comes from ruminating on harvesting season whilst staring out at a blanket of snow coating the streets. It was only when I sat down to entertain the idea that I became cognizant of a deeper need to explore the current transitional state I’m in now, along with my incessant denial of it.

It’s bizarre how inconsistent we can be in the ways we apply ourselves through various areas of our lives. With writing, I can sit inside of transition, I can trust the process, and more remarkably, I can trust myself. I would say pretty much every other area is a work in progress. While this gets frustrating, it does also help knowing that I am in fact capable of moving through life in this way, even if the example is shown through how I navigate just one area of it. But the question remains — why is it that I can’t seem to move through other areas of my life with this same demeanour?

I’m not confident I have a solution pinned down exactly, but I am playing around with ideas of how to work towards carrying this perspective in to other areas of my life. One of them being that this year, I intend to place a central focus on language. While part of this direction is quite literal — for instance, I hope to seek out Spanish lessons to hone in and absorb a language I’ve always felt so fond of — it’s also a focus on the language, particularly, the words, I use when speaking to myself.

In saying this, while being kinder to myself generally falls under this category and carries itself as a fundamental component, I’m also becoming more and more aware of how certain words elicit visceral responses for me. To define a period of my life or parts of myself, it’s important that I pay closer attention to how my body reacts to the words I’m using — even if objectively, those words are not characterized as harmful or negative ones.

While I imagine most people wouldn’t necessarily hold an adverse reaction to the word ‘transition’, for me, it has always felt like a roadblock — a wall I keep hitting, or a mark of stagnancy. What I’ve been shifting more towards is looking at these “periods” as initiations, whilst (working on) coming to terms with the truth that our lives are transitional by nature. To do this, I’ve stopped using the word ‘transition’ altogether because it evidently has not been working for me. What I can better identify with are naming these periods ones of movement, initiation, rest, curiosity or exploration.

There’s this faint switch that turns on when I play with words and use them to my vantage, especially when I find myself uncertain of where to go next, in misalignment with what I value most, or just craving something different from what has been the status quo. It’s not that I’m interupted by a euphoric wave or begin to receive all the direction I’ve been yearning for simply because I start thinking of this phase of my life as an ‘exploratory’ one rather than a ‘transitional’ one. What happens is more of a quiet acceptance and a pause to the battle going on inside my own head.

My hope is that over time, through practicing, playing with, and paying attention to words and the weight they carry for me, I can learn how to better move through uncertainty and maybe even begin to romanticize my present as much as I romanticize looking at my journey in hindsight.