Following your live dream, creating your lifework, living your soul purpose, a life as god has meant for you, a life according to God's plan, following your heart; all expressions essentially mean the same thing, listen to that inner voice and start doing what you really like/want/need to do. With the whole world talking about it nowadays, a new fashion seems to be born.
Where many prefer to stick to thinking, talking, dreaming about it, I have decided not only to listen but also act on it. What happens after that? Is this something you really “decided” to do or does it, more or less, just happen to someone? How does a process like this go? What do you actually have to face once you have entered this part of your soul? Is it one big hallelujah story: “I saw the light and ever since I have been living in Walhalla”? Or is reality showing a much-complicated picture in which loss, pain, disappointment, fear, not knowing, wondering on earth what you have started, this is never going to work thoughts, money issues, letting go of security, entering the unknown, faith, trust, unexpected turns, new discoveries are the ingredients of the daily life?
Where, when and how did it all start? A selection of the turning points and the living-changing moments.
Enough=Enough
Until February 2007 I was living a life as a policy advisor at a provincial government in the Netherlands. So extremely good I was in my job, so extremely bad I was in treating my health, I had been struggling forward for almost six years with serious sleeping problems and a returning eating disorder. Life wasn’t really fun. After another night of no sleep, one morning I realized that this mess was already going on for six years now and not getting any better. So finally I decided: “Enough is enough”. To make a long story short: four months later I left the company with a pretty good deal.
So now I am going to do what I want to do
Now nobody was telling me anymore what to do, I decided that from now on: I am going to do what I want to do (with an emphasize on “I”). A whole new world opened up to me: first and above all: I kicked out the TV (best decision ever). Instead of that, I rediscovered the radio and the joy of listening: from now on the sounds of classical music were filling my house and I robbed the whole audiobook section of the local library. I started travelling. I made two trips to the Middle East, went to Vienna and joined a Burn Night Supper in Glasgow (well yes if your birthday is on the same day as Robby Burns, the 25th of January…). The intellectual parts of my brain got fed again with regular visits to the “Studium Generale” lectures at the local university and listening to those great audio lectures of Home-Academy (with again the local library as the supplier). Besides that I started studying again: Cultural Science at the Open University. Most amazing of all was to get involved in the flourishing international network of Connect International. And let me not forget to mention, that I started practising the art of daily meditation.
I want to live in Jordan
A striking third life-changing moment happened on my second holiday to the middle-east which included a second visit to the ancient city of Petra in Jordan (2008). On my holy place, my rock in an outside corner of Petra, it became so clear to me that I wanted to live in Jordan. I have two pictures of myself, standing there on that rock, expressing: energy, appetite for life, strength, presence, joy. Before leaving I found it necessary to improve my English and to get international work experience (because who, where or what on earth outside of the Netherlands would be waiting for a provincial civil servant with poor English language skills). The solution was an internship at Connect International, a foundation that helps internationals moving to the northern Netherlands to settle in and stays with them throughout their entire stay. This internship was MAGIC: working with so many different nationalities, from relocation work to radio interviews, from student groups to lady events, from event organization to setting up a whole new international welcome centre. I was walking on air, invincible, unstoppable.
I thought…
The foundation is cracking
Spring 2009, I thought I was ready to leap Jordan. But the universe decided differently. Already starting at the end of 2008, I got stuck in a complicated involvement with someone close to me. The climax took place in May 2009:
Hurting through the bones, the foundation on which my life was built on cracked and I fell through it. This simple sentence describes an incredible pain and an unprecedented life disturbance that has been haunting me ever since. I feel totally lost in myself, lost in life, disconnected, don’t know what to do, where to look for it, how to look for it. Whatever I try, I seem to end up at the wrong places, at the wrong times, meeting the wrong people.
Getting ill
Soon after this hurtful event in spring 2009, I got seriously ill. A whole summer was spent on doctor visits, hospital and medical exams eventually resulting in a diagnosis of a rare inflammatory bowel disease: collagenous colitis. With medications and an extremely strict diet, it took me a year to recover.
Forcing a break through?
So when the illness was not there anymore to hide behind, I forced myself to spend the fall of 2010 in Jordan. I was so hoping that this would cause a breakthrough in my totally lost-disconnected feeling. But as I could have predicted, same situation different location: from sitting on the sofa in Groningen, I was now … sitting on the sofa in Amman. Going to Jordan was not an escape, since the longing of moving there already existed long before my personal crisis. But going without plan, one could argue was that a wise decision? Probably not, but also I know, as soon as Harma starts thinking, she thinks about it and nothing is happening...
Choosing Jordan
After a year of being on and off in in Amman, in August 2011, I have decided to move to Jordan permanently and put my house in Groningen on the market.
Comments