As I get older, I feel like I have more answers.

And I wonder if it’s because I see more problems.

And if I think I am the one to solve them.

What has caused my eyes to open? Motherhood or simply the experience of getting older?

Have I assumed a burden placed upon me in a world where the leaders, past and present, have failed me? Have failed us?

Often, I am unsure of how I go about solving these problems no one has told me to solve.

They feel too big, and yet, if the answers have come to me, is it or is it not my responsibility to find a home for them?

As I don’t see myself as the answers’ home but the ride they hitch on their way home.

I had a coaching session today in which I explored my fear of heights.

There is this one bridge that I drive over every time I travel through upstate New York, and this summer, there was construction on it and they took off the guard rails! I could not look out my window (I wasn’t driving!) until we got onto the other side. My insides and outsides clenched and tightened up as we passed over the bridge. The only thing unclenched was my mouth which opened when yelled at my husband every time he tried to point out the construction or the boats in the water underneath.

Fears are a funny thing.

I have no idea where my fear of heights came from. It certainly has to do with control (or lack thereof) in it and maybe my brain said, “Heights is the thing I will latch onto!”

My fear isn’t debilitating though I’ve never tried climbing a ladder higher than to paint my dining room ceiling. And part of me thinks that any normal person would wig out on that bridge…I guess I can’t say how bad the fear is if I never actually have experiences that test it.

Through my session which involved some hypnosis and rewiring of the neuropathways, I realized that my fear of heights prevents me from seeing the big picture. I get so stuck in the fear that I don’t take in other details like the forests surrounding the bridge or the river that flows beneath it. Forget the even smaller details of boats in the river or the leaves changing colors on the trees.

Perhaps that is what fears does to us. In the heightened state of fight/flight/freeze, we get stuck focusing on one thing, and we can’t widen our view.

I’m grateful for my session today because I think releasing this fear will enable me to pull back and look at the much larger picture. I’m looking forward to seeing what my reaction is when I pass over that bridge again later this year.

As I was thinking about context yesterday, I thought of the word texture and how context gives us texture to our words.

The ‘text’ part of the word comes from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning of “teks-” which are “to weave” and “to fabricate” (etymonline.com).

I can picture the various words offering context to a story weaving in and out of themselves. Context gives a pattern and a texture to our words and without it, words and stories feel flat.

So many phrases in the English language can be turned around to mean something totally different.

Context is so important.

In Toishanese (the dialect of Chinese I speak), playing with words and tones is very common. It has contributed to my love of words and word play.

A couple of weeks ago, after leaving in the wee morning before the kids were up, I thought, “The last thing I want to do is kiss and hold my kids.”

The phrase “the last thing I want to do” is usually coupled with something bad. Most of the time, it is used to say that thing I hate to do, I’m going to leave it until last.

But what is the very last thing you’d want to do, as in the thing you’d want to do one last time before you to leave this world forever?

Perhaps the last thing we want to do can inform us of what we actually want to do.

It is funny how after a month off writing, there is this pressure of what to write. It reminds me of when I would write less frequently on my blog. It felt like I had to write a novel each time not just “for the algorithm” but also because it felt like my one opportunity to talk about X and it had to be comprehensive.

So, as much as I want to dive into all the things in this first post, I am taking a step back to say – if you have contemplated stopping or changing your participation in something (e.g., an activity, a committee, a job) but have felt fear because it would feel like you would lose a part yourself, do it.

Maybe losing yourself is exactly what you need.