i learn what to do by staying

on slowing down enough to feel where i am

instructions.

drink more water.
go to bed earlier.
answer messages the first time you read them.
stop rearranging the same corner of the room,
the plant stand angled toward the window, then away, then back again

keep the apartment clean all the time.
don’t leave dishes in the sink. don’t let things pile up.
keep your thoughts organized, write things down, have a system.
keep your life moving forward in a straight line.

finish what you start.
don’t start something new until you’ve finished the last thing.
don’t leave things half done, half open, half said.

decide what you want,
stick to it,
be consistent.

don’t make it a big deal.
don’t make it about you.
don’t feel more than the situation calls for.

don’t be late.
don’t forget.
don’t drop the ball.

eat the rich.
earn more money.
carry your own weight.

care about what is happening. have you fallen asleep on the world burning?
whether you do anything or not,
have an opinion or analysis on everything that is happening,
a conviction of what is right,
silence is violence.
give more time and attention to the news than to your own life, your people, your neighbors.

be less sensitive
be less affected
be less moved by things that don’t technically matter.

be more sensitive.
be more affected,
swallow what others experience as more important than your own.

always do what you say.
be a good listener.
understand the other.

stop overthinking.
stop rereading.
stop going back over the same moment as if there is something still there to find.

don’t rock the boat.
don’t be entitled.
don’t be offensive and inappropriate.

be bold.
be fearless.
stand up for what you believe in.

when the rule, the expectation, the spoken or unspoken idea of what is right
or best or good has arrived,
i have swallowed them whole.
i learn as all humans learn, as social creatures.
this is the world you live inside. learn the rules. then follow the rules.

lately, i’ve been looking at them one by one.
do i want to live by this instruction manual? what wants to be chewed and digested? what wants to be spit out?
for each idea of what to do or how to do it, i recognize the voice. i know where it came from.

it has been useful in certain rooms.
it has gotten things done, and protected me, and offered ease of access.
it has also hurt me. because there is no way to do this or get this right. there is only the living. and the living is everything.

i am turning fifty this year, and some sort of review
is taking place just beneath the surface.
i am no longer bound to keep following what i first found decades ago that kept me safe or promised assurance and security and predictable knowns.
my instructions are found and felt from the inside, in response to the living.
this is how i learn and know what is mine and not mine,
what matters to me,
what i will do with my time in this very fleeting existence that not a single one of us can or will master.

i drink water when i remember the feeling of having a body,
when my mouth goes dry and i notice it, when the glass is already in my hand.

i go to bed when something in me actually closes,
when the house settles and the last light feels finished.

i answer messages when i have something to say,
when there is space in me to be with the words and the connection formed in the sharing of them, when i am not doing two other things at the same time.

i leave things open all the time:
a book facedown by the bed, a receipt marking a place i haven’t returned to in weeks.
a sentence in the notes app that ends mid-thought, blinking.
a conversation that carries over days, picking up in fragments instead of finishing in one sitting.

i start things before i am ready
i stop things before they are complete
i return later and find that they have changed shape without me

i change my mind. not once, but repeatedly.
a response to something shifting
the way a day tilts without asking, the way a feeling moves through and alters what seemed settled.

i write things down and then don’t follow what i wrote
because something else has more weight.
i let a thought stay scattered
and notice what returns on its own.

i keep something to myself until it feels like mine,
not because it should be hidden, but because it is still forming.
i let a decision change midway through
without forcing it back into its earlier shape.

i notice when something is asking for my attention
even when it doesn’t make sense to give it.
i let a moment pass without forming a position
without needing to translate it into language.

i take in what is happening without turning it into urgency.
i let someone else’s experience remain theirs
without rearranging myself to match it.
i listen until i can feel where my own response begins.

i say something and then feel it land
and sometimes take it back.
i feel the pull to agree
and wait to see if it holds.
i allow myself to be seen as inconsistent
because i am responding to something that is changing.

i follow what has life:
a pressure behind the ribs that doesn’t go away
a kind of leaning forward without deciding to
something that stays in the body after i try to move on

this is not efficient.
it does not move in a straight line.
it does not produce clean outcomes or predictable timelines.

it creates something else.
a day where i spend twenty minutes moving a single object until the room holds together again
a conversation that finds its shape slowly, over time, instead of all at once
a life that doesn’t quite make sense from the outside but holds together from within

i lose this when i move too fast,
when i decide too quickly what something is.
when i act before anything in me has had time to respond.

so i slow down.
not as a rule. not as something to get right
just long enough
to feel where i am
to notice what is already moving

and from there
something becomes clear.
the instructions that are my own.

a word that comes from the body instead of the script
a movement that begins before it is explained
a choice that forms as i am making it.

this is how i know what to do.
not because i decided in advance
but because i stayed
long enough
for something living to answer.