Welcome to this week’s 1-2-1 newsletter. A small pause to reflect, reconnect, and pay attention to what matters.
Inside you’ll find one idea I’m sitting with, two voices I’m learning from, and one question or practice to carry into the week ahead.
I’ve spent the last few days buying the least interesting things imaginable: garbage bags, a compost bin, curtain rods, and soap refills. It doesn’t make for exciting stories. But I’ve started to realize that rebuilding a life rarely begins with exciting decisions. It begins with ordinary ones.
The strange thing about rebuilding a life is that the practical work is often easier than the emotional work.
Installing shelves is straightforward. Measure twice. Drill once. If you make a mistake, patch the hole and try again.
Leaving someone you loved deeply isn’t like that.
It’s Ok Not to Be Ok
“It’s okay to not be okay” is something I say often to the people in my life. Like most good advice, it’s easier to give than it is to accept. Grief is a funny emotion that way.
We all know it. Nobody goes through life without experiencing it, and yet rarely do we talk about it. As a result, I think grief can be a sneaky emotion. It swirls around in the background, quietly influencing our thoughts and decisions more than we realize.
I think it’s because grief is bittersweet. In order to grieve, you had to love first. It had to matter. That means there’s so much good to look back on. But it’s ended, and that’s hard.
Some endings are final, and that kind of grief may be the hardest because there’s no path but forward. But many of life’s decisions aren’t as permanent as we imagine. Repair is sometimes possible. I wonder if that’s an equally difficult place to be for different reasons.
It leaves room for doubt, hesitation, and second-guessing.
I’m generally an anxious person and, as I’ve shared before, a people pleaser to boot. So uncertainty is familiar territory. If I tell a joke and someone doesn’t laugh, I wonder why. What could I have done differently? If I try to anticipate what someone needs and miss the mark, my mind follows the same path.
I’m finding it very difficult to stay true to a decision I believe is right when my mind is full of uncertainty and doubt.
I think grief is especially difficult when you can see your own fingerprints on how you got here. There was a time when I believed life was simply happening to me. That I was doing the best I could with what I had. But eventually you have to ask a harder question. How am I contributing to these outcomes?
Every day we see examples of people overcoming extraordinary odds. So why can’t I do something as ordinary as saving for retirement, paying down debt, or preparing for the future?
Is life really so difficult for me? Or have I been avoiding decisions that create conflict because saying no is uncomfortable?
People pleasing rarely likes tension. But avoiding tension often creates a much bigger problem later.
That can become the beginning of a dark spiral, and I don’t have all the answers for how to get through it.
The more time goes on, the less convinced I am that we ever truly arrive on the other side. Life doesn’t stop asking difficult questions. There is always another challenge. Another moment that asks you to question yourself.
So maybe the goal isn’t to wait for the calm to come. Maybe it’s to recognize that hope can exist while the darkness is still here.
I’m not a victim. I contributed to my mess. I’m disappointed in myself and in how it worked out. I would have preferred a different road.
And yet, reality gets a vote.
Here I am, and this is the path forward.
2 Voices I’m Learning From
1.
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. - Marcus Aurelius
I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot lately. I don’t know that grief arrives to teach us anything, but it certainly reveals what matters. We grieve because we loved. We grieve because something meaningful has changed.
At its best, grief can also remind us that forever doesn’t exist. Everything we love is temporary. As painful as that truth is, it can also become an invitation to slow down, appreciate what’s in front of us, and choose how we move forward.
What stands in the way becomes the way. Maybe grief doesn’t just point toward what’s been lost. Maybe it also points toward gratitude.
2.
What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us. - Helen Keller
I’d never come across this quote before, and its simplicity is what makes it so powerful.
If something mattered to you, if you loved deeply, then some part of it remains with you. The relationship may end. The season of life may pass. But the person you became because of those experiences doesn’t disappear.
I find that deeply comforting. Moving forward doesn’t mean leaving behind everything that was good. It means carrying those moments with you as you continue becoming the person you’re meant to be.
1 REFLECTION / ACTION
Can you be grateful for what was while still trusting yourself to build what’s next?
I don’t know who I’ll meet down the road.
I don’t know what this apartment will look like.
I don’t know if this life I’m building will become the one I imagine.
What I do know is this: every shelf I hang, every meal I cook, and every chapter I write is another vote for the life I say I want.
Maybe certainty isn’t what I’m looking for. Maybe what I need is enough evidence to keep taking the next step.
Today, that’s enough.
If this resonated, share it with someone who might need it.
Thanks for being here.
Jack
P.S. I’ve been thinking a lot about pressure and freedom lately.
I recently published a short essay called The Freedom Paradox.
It goes deeper into some of what I’ve been working through.
eBook + audiobook here:
https://jackjohnstonwrites.gumroad.com/l/freedom-paradox