Happy Monday! The last few weeks, I’ve been spending my energy adjusting to the pace of three jobs and being a full-time graduate student in the process of completing my thesis. As graduation approaches, I find my feet falling in step, ready to carry me across the finish line and since I’ve gained my footing once more, I can prioritize sharing on this platform again.
In December, I attended a virtual writing session by one of my favorite writers. During the session, Rupi Kaur, writer of three globally acclaimed poetic works, asked the participants to use twelve sheets of paper to respond to twelve different prompts. The purpose of the exercise was to have a prompt and response to read and think about for each month of 2021.
I will be sharing the responses to these prompts once a month on the first Monday of every new month. This post, will contain the note I wrote for January. Some months I will only share the words I wrote during the writing session, however, other months I will expound on the words within the short paragraph or write a response. I encourage you to set a timer, read the prompt and write whatever comes to your mind for 2 minutes.
Sharing my responses to the prompts without making huge adjustments to my words is a reminder to myself that there is beauty within imperfection. My words are still beautiful even before they’ve been airbrushed and edited a million times over and that is true for you. I encourage you to write without fear of perfection, simply write what is on your heart. The italicized words are from the writing session in December and the bold words are my response to the italicized words.
The prompt for this first response is: Uncertainty
Life is filled with you. We often forget how little power we have until you strike. The ground shakes and our hearts drop as if you weren’t here all along, lurking in the shadows. Uncertainty is ever present but we push it aside, constantly planning and scheming as if it doesn’t exist. Uncertainty is ever-present but our egos are big enough to allow us to forget it. Uncertainty defines our reality.
It’s interesting that uncertainty happened to be the prompt for January because the entire month of January was riddled with it. More than anything, loss and death remind me of the uncertain nature of the lives we all live. When I first read my response to the prompt, I wept. “We often forget how little power we have until you strike” felt like the soundtrack to the 31 days of January because I definitely felt uncertain all month long. But the interesting and beautiful part of it all is that though we don’t have ultimate control of a lot we still have so much control of those things that exist within ourselves. We are not entirely powerless beings, moved left and right at the whim of an all-powerful mystical force and those things that we can control are just as important, if not more important, than the things that we cannot.
The Introvert's Escape Maneuver 