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I wanted to be certain
I spent extended time alone on a boat at the beginning of the fifth decade and it was a time of renewal of sorts. There were painful endings that led to this floating place, space on the water.
Being alone was my daily tonic, alone at first to indulgence reminiscence, and months before aloneness led to that space free of the clutter of knowledge and experience that led to more freedom of being.
At first, I couldn't really see my fear. I saw fears and told myself stories as I mulled them over and over and over but I didn't look into the heart of fear itself to see how it worked in me, my incessant need for approval, being liked, being punished for minor and larger transgressions. The biggest cause of my fear is of being uncertain, as though I had a choice....so I protected myself in a shell of doing this and doing that, coloring at every opportunity within the lines of everyone else's stated pictures. What a way to live. I feared not having enough of this, of that, of hurting this one, of hurting myself. Certainty would protect me I thought but I was so wrong. Life is change. Change had a multitude of uncertainties. Do I then fear fearing uncertainty? Of course not, I needed to find myself again, look out without thinking at life directly until I see clearly...free of accumulated experience..free of built up knowledge..free of my own past..and just see. I could only do this by being alone.

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