The Queens were onto something

“I want something good to die for
To make it beautiful to live.
I want a new mistake, lose is more than hesitate.
Do you believe it in your head?
I can go with the flow
I would say it doesn’t matter (with the flow) matter anymore”
- "Go With The Flow” Queens of the Stone Age

Does everything have to have some sort of real-life, help-with-my-future value? I’ve always been very oriented in all that I do – oriented towards a goal, in any way or form. The clubs I joined, books I read, courses I took etc. it wasn’t until the plans failed, plan A, plan B, plan C (that I came up with on the spot to avoid internal conflict, dissonance anyone?) all came crashing down around me. It wasn’t until I was unable to find a direction to follow, a goal to work towards, that I was able to really appreciate the words ‘go with the flow’. It is scary as hell, but all in all not that bad a concept.

There is a benefit to ‘going with the flow’ – I think while on this flow I was better able to understand myself, who I am, who I want to be. And not those tangible, material things like a house, a car and a good job. The REAL things, the feelings I want to hold on to, the ideas I want to live by, the people I want to meet, the experiences I want to have. And no I don’t have a list of these experiences, but I know that I want them and that’s enough.  And then there’s the unknown, the empty space that you know will get filled, but  “with what?” --- that is the question. And for once, it is perfectly okay that the space isn’t filled yet and that I don’t know the when or the how either.

That knowledge, that self-knowledge is what I have been striving for, for a very long time. What’s great about figuring that out is that, along with that knowledge I have learned that it is ever changing. It is not written in stone, or in a notebook, it is a butterfly effect. With every new person in my life, with every new experience and feeling the tables will turn and I will grow, I will renew, I will change.

I guess I can’t say that I’m not goal-oriented anymore though. The goals have just changed. They aren’t associated with a career, or a grade, with a possession, they are a true reflection of Who I want to be, not what I want to be defined by. I don’t want “Naila the doctor”, “the mother”, “the businesswoman”, the” board member” (even though I do want some of these) – I want to be Naila, the one who can one day look back on the past 10 years and say, “Yes, I followed my heart and even though I might not be a firefighter or a ballerina like I planned when I was 6… I feel good, I do good, I cry, I laugh, I care, I want, I help, I see ... just like I always wanted to.”