Once I’ve made up my mind and come to a decision, I leap into the proverbial unknown landscape we call our waking life.

Now, it’s not as simple as it may sound, because I will certainly question myself time and time again. I do so nearly every day actually.

But sometimes we just know when our time someplace is up, or maybe it’s a job that no longer resonates with us. Perhaps a relationship has met its end and we just know—we know it’s time to move along. There’s never any telling what the future may hold for us, but we can certainly predict what following through with the same routine will.

I’ve spent the past eight years of my life (with a few exceptions) living in a beautiful mountainous area in northwestern Montana. But for the past year, have felt the inexplicable urge to move—to leave this place for new horizons. I still remember this quaint feeling that hit last summer, almost as though I was being beckoned away from here right then and there in mind, imagination and spirit.

It’s scary to contemplate leaving what has become so familiar to us, especially when we’ve grown quite fond of it and are feeling perfectly settled where we’re at. But that’s the thing about a soul whose lust for wander remains a part of the mystery of journey and learning anew. We might settle for a time and work really hard at ignoring the inevitable—that whispering voice within us, telling us, “It’s time.”

Our friends and love ones reside here with us and have no reservations about remaining in-place, but we still find ourselves growing out of our own skins—another self-imposed cocoon which has offered us comfortable space to nestle in and grow; to slumber, in a sense. It’s hard explaining to others that we are no longer feeling it, that we feel our heart now belongs elsewhere.

We seek that external validation, that our choice to go is supported and warranted—but to no real avail.

It oftentimes makes little sense to others and can actually stir a fair amount of controversy, depending on just what kind of circumstances we’ve buried ourselves in for so long. Periods like this can dismantle our illusions and shake the very essence of our reality to the core.

This is how I’ve been feeling as of late. Knowing this, I’m suddenly beginning to see this place I’ve called home for so long in a new light—a shifting perspective of sorts. I appreciate the little things that I’ve grown so accustomed to having as part of my day-to-day life, like my routine hikes up and down our neighboring mountains or the random trail walking I’ve enjoyed regularly throughout this wondrous city.

There are some amazing people and attractions here, like this weekend for example: The River City Roots Festival. The name itself implies a good time for those who enjoy live music in the middle of downtown, on this last weekend before the entrance of another college year begins. Yet I’m saddened by the remorseful state I feel in my heart and mind.

The memories, trials and triumphs I’ve experienced here will be washed away—stripped from my core self as I brandish my humility with a new sense of direction into the unknown world now lying ahead. So much changes, yet so much remains the same.

For some of us, like myself, we have to go and at some point, there eludes any sort of explanation that we can offer another, except that we must go now.

We trust in the unknown, because we’ve learned to trust our intuition while allowing so much of our egoic past to slowly diminish. Our pride no longer needs to remain intact, once we reconcile any urgency to let go, especially to what no longer serves our highest and best functions.

Letting go is a liberating feeling and if we can faithfully reside in the unknown, no matter what its consequences—success or failure, we realize the point of all this, was to learn and grow. In another eight years, I wish to look back at how much I’ve done just that. How much I have grown into the person I shall become.

Who that is today, remains a mystery and it’s truly irrelevant at this precise moment. What I’ll be doing is not quite apparent to me just yet. How I’ll make my living is still anyone’s guess, because it’s changed so often in the past. But I know that my heart is urging me beyond the shadows of my comfort zones, into the blinding light of wonder and awe—a new spectacle to behold for a time.

I can only witness this if I move, if I animate Spirit by moving through time and space toward new horizons of what’s now unknown to me, what’s still more of a mirage with no reasonable explanation as of yet.

If your soul beckons you, listen—go where it might lead you with one certainty: that you’ll never be the same again.

When the bell tolls, we just know. And there come a time and place, many moons and seasons beyond tonight’s, where we will sit in that awestruck wonder of what we did, so long ago and how those consequences changed our fragile and malleable lives.

Let us pray that it all ends, as it should—as we’d dream it to be—because this life is merely a journey my friends. Our stories lie, not on the beaten path, but within the mosaic of time and the mysteries which are destined to unravel while wandering about the majesty of open space.

 

Author: Thayne Ulschmid

Image: Pixabay; Elephant archives

Editor: Nicole Cameron