On being visible

Happy Summer Solstice from East London

If we’ve been connected for a while, you might already know summer is not my season.

The sun feels like a piercing eye that sees too much and asks too much of us.

I thrive in the darker and cooler Spring/Autumn days that sharpen the senses and leave space for mystery.

And yet, this is my yearly invitation to practice finding comfort in sticky hot discomfort, and summoning the courage to not only see more but also to be more visible. Especially since the stretching brightness (sunrise is currently at 4:42am and sunset at 9:20pm) and longer shadows, make it hard to hide.

Perhaps this increased luminosity is what led me to currently be knee deep into a sort of life inventory, an ambitious attempt to pin down and distill the experiences that have unfolded this year so far.

My desktop is filled with documents: some written in Tokyo, others in Seoul, many in the Japanese countryside… plus the 3 that I'm currently writing (all at once).

This typing frenzy is an attempt to make sense of what has happened. Of who I am now. Of what a yearn to create in the next chapter of my life.

Coming back from Asia has been a big culture shock.

I’m voluntarily floating and holding my breath, reluctant to fully land back in the UK, in case it turns out everything I experienced vanishes with my exhale.

For the last couple of weeks, I've needed evidence to confirm it did happen, visual cues that remind me: “it wasn't a dream, you were there”.

I’m clinging to vestiges of my Korean “magnetic” manicure (I had no idea it existed prior to the lady saying “everyone is wearing it here”), I’m reluctant to use the matcha I bought in Kyoto (seeing my unopened tea set in the counter gives me comfort), and I religiously visit the asian grocery shop that is conveniently located in the next block (I get teary-eyed when I recognise brands and soju I drank with my Korean date while eating fried chicken).

It’s been hard to come back from what felt like “the best time of my life”. Fear whispering in my ear that “it’s all down-hill from here” has made me feel like a child, reluctant to release her grip from her favourite stuffed unicorn.

Often people talk about how hard it is to let go of the pain, but letting go of joyful moments can feel just as challenging.

It's tempting to cling to the comfort of what was, dressing ourselves with romanticised memories and fantasies of what could’ve been.

Yet grasping of any type disrupts the flow of life.

It isn't until we surrender the past (however delightful or painful) that we have a chance of creating something real and beautiful in the now.

This solstice, with the sharp sun as my witness, I am called to unclench my overgrown sparkly nails and surrender all that has been into the light.

To move from the contraction of loss, into the openness of possibilities.

To trust life (and myself) that my trip was not as good as it gets, but rather a glimpse of how good it can get.

To remember I can't ever lose the pleasure and love of experiences that are now a part of my cells.

To dance naked while shouting “show me how good life can be!”

To being courageous enough to allow myself to be seen - while risking the pain that comes from being vulnerable.

For, as David Whyte says, “when we can be seen, we can be touched, and when we can be touched we can be hurt”.

And yet the only thing scarier of being visible and potentially experiencing pain, is not allowing ourselves to inhabit the fullness of who we are and not allowing ourselves to be truly known… which also holds it’s own kind of agony.

So, my love, shall we do it together?

Shall we be brave and allow the sun to kiss every part of us?