Letter to My People: 'On Fate & Faith'

this week's musing..

Gang. Today’s thoughts are short enough. Recently I’ve been tickled pink. Bowled over fetus style, could-a made Black red if I tried real hard because I couldn’t believe what I had discovered. A realization is settling on my skin and I am integrating it with speed before I forget it, gifting it to the both of us in writing. I am hurried here, abandoning the shame of being human so we can chat about it. And maybe you too, if you are anything like me and struggle to tie eurekas to memory, we can share this bubble and make room in it. Either way, I want to help the both of us remember. For when time wants to play mischief and sand-doom the Knowing into nothing. We can come back here together, hold each other and say ‘remember, friend.’

The past few years have lifted my skin for me and had me groan where I stood.
I’ve come out of the darkest places sweaty from swinging at life, thankfully.
Open skin doesn’t bother me much anymore but showing anyone still makes me flinch. I am learning how to steel while on display. But perhaps, to flinch is human and to heal is divine.

This week, I found a new thing that I had aged by living it.
I have lived by fate but failed at faith.

This sentence has caused much internal fuss, much unpicking is being done and the eyebrows are dough’ing to rise. Up until now, I had been courting life a particular way, without question. I have lived by fate most of my adult life. You see, there are many of us that know early what we have been sent to Earth for. Some spirits arrive knowing and the household knowing with them what they have been called to be. The gifts come tumbling out loudly. Some spirits arrive with a coat rack too many, so their own will can carry them wherever they please, sorting themselves through multiple journeys. Some spirits come and must meet themselves in the world long enough to find their own way. Some of us use our opportunities, lineage, interests or education as a guide. However way we each arrive at the Knowing, if at all, to each their own, as long as one arrives.

You see, I was created to create. I’m an artist that weaves words, either on page or on stage, that much is clear. However, the danger of the Knowing with loud gifts or interests the certainty of who you are - because don’t we often name ourselves by the thing we can do ? - the danger is the mind has been prepared for the eventuality of the what but not for the how. So even though, you are clear on identity, you become a writhing mess on the journey with no fuel packed for faith on the journey fate has set out for you.

Faith is the only way to meet fate, and so I learned. Humbled and shy from this delayed wisdom. I find faith a difficult thing to embody. The closest I’ve gotten to faith recently is optimism: it is a sugary weak tooth, optimism. Faith requires you to trust the selves that outline clearer on the journey. Faith requires you to monkey-swing from the start of an idea to it’s end with a death drop beneath you. Faith demands self governance rather than serendipity. While fate is the far away pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Faith teaches you to keep walking on the shaky bridge on the way over, even if the trolls look familiar. I would pause entire sections of my life to ask why the bridge shook in the first place - a soliloquy on the grief of shaky bridges and familiar trolls, even if I didn’t fall, even if I was never going to. Faith firmly demands a daily commitment regardless of what perils Earth spits at you.

It finally clicked.

I wasn’t good at faith and it was thrashing my nervous system. It was increasing my anxiety and turning up the noise in my head. Every time the dream cracked, or warped or took a left I didn’t anticipate, I fell into a hole. Every time my shoes got too tight, I held the gods by their belt buckle pulling and pulling for comfort first, answers next. It is time to practice believing in face of life’s humor and I am not bold at it. I am clumsy at faith. I am quick to dash it by the neck and throw my hands in the air, determined to act like I’ve tried, a well time tantrum imminent.

I can admit that I haven’t tried for years and It is embarrassing as much as it is freeing. I know where I’m supposed to go, I know where I am going, I also know the methods I have to use to get there. But to dare to believe, to dare to have faith regardless of the Everything that inevitably happens. To have faith in myself, the journey, the dream in the face of no evidence, in the absence of funds for the creations, in the confusion of untangling and translating the work, with the body bent out of whack and home becoming more elusive, more concept than space.

Have Faith. So you can have the Fate.

That’s a new chapter I hope I am ready for.

There’s no fancy ending, I’m just trying my hand at giving it a go.

What do you think ?