Sometimes, we must put our doing down. We must relieve ourselves from our buzzing and flying to be still in mystery. To be alone in vastness. We must let ourselves be swallowed by unknowing.

There are questions that swallow us whole, and it should be this way. There are questions we keep busy with buzzing for. Questions that are a dull pulse, the moment after our eyes shut before sleep. The questions we hurry into sleep and dream to avoid.

If you care at all for a handmade life, a life bore from your own bones, your own spit, your own breath. A life that is yours. Then you will make space for these questions. You will sit down with them on your bedroom floor. And you will let them rise up out of the corners of your body. For these are the questions that need living. That need growing. These are the questions that lead you to joy.

I have been busy with planning, dreaming, creating, and moving. The doing. With this much of me poured into doing, I know just as much of me must be poured into being.

Sometimes the scales tip. I am doing too much. I am buzzing. And when I lay down at night, I can feel questions tugging at me. I can feel my mysteries wanting a dance partner (me). I’m the only one they want. But I’m tired and want to continue on this one-track path. It’s so much cleaner, tidier, clearer here. We don’t have the messiness of truth and life and the Universe here. We have only the clear-cut path of ambition and dream-chasing. It’s all life and it’s all beautiful. And sometimes, we need the well-traveled road.

But some of you, some of us, are swimming in mystery. And you can hypnotize yourself into a manicured highway all you like. Cars whizzing by, maybe you in your fancy Porshe. But I know, when you close your eyes, the wild wind of the Universe plays with your hair. You are pulled out into the questions again.

What is real for me? What has REAL joy for me? Is it the same as it was yesterday, last year, last decade? Or do I need to switch highways? Do I need to set out on foot for a while to be lost in the woods? Is there a flock of birds I’d like to follow until I can’t see them anymore?

These are the questions. We steer our lives (or so we think) for most of our lives. Without stopping to ask if we are even moving into greater rivers of joy.

You are not foolish to start on a different path. You are foolish to think the path you chose 10 years ago, last year, or even this morning is the one that still belongs to you.

You are too rich a soul, there is too much mystery waiting for dance partners, and there is far too much joy to wash through your heart for this blindfolded steering.

Ask your questions. In the dark. With a hand over your heart. Bow to the answers drawn forth from your soul. This is your river of joy.