The Blueprint You Keep Rehearsing
Fear is a landlord living under your skin,
It charges you rent in a room called doubt,
It keeps the lights low, locks the windows in,
Then calls the darkness “what life is about.”
You wake and reach first for the worst-case scene,
Before your bare feet even touch the floor,
Your mind begins rehearsing what might mean,
Another loss, another slammed door.
You call it being careful, wise, prepared,
But wisdom does not need to live in dread,
It looks like love when pain has been repaired,
Not every awful movie in your head.
You read one text without a heart or smile,
Then build a courtroom from a single word,
You sentence someone cold for quite a while,
Because an old abandoned child was heard.
You say, “I’m fine,” while cleaning every room,
While scrolling faces you will never meet,
While working late to outrun inner gloom,
Then calling numbness discipline and heat.
You call it standards when you cannot bend,
You call it freedom when you will not stay,
You leave before another can offend,
Then blame the world for pushing love away.
And ego wears a suit and speaks with grace,
It says, “I just see things more clearly now,”
But often it is fear with a straight face,
A frightened heart beneath a clever brow.
The intellect can build a spotless cage,
With theories stacked like books against the door,
It names each wound, each chapter, age by age,
Yet never lets the grieving child explore.
Some people pray for peace, then feed the fire,
They replay every insult, every slight,
They say they want a life that climbs up higher,
Then kneel each night before their old affright.
Your nervous system learned to sound alarms,
It learned because it once had cause to scream,
But you are not condemned to live in arms,
Around a ghost inside a burning dream.
Pause when your blood begins to choose the fight,
Observe the thought before it turns to law,
A wound may speak with all your force and might,
But it is not the whole of what you saw.
The future starts where honest silence grows,
Where you stop feeding every fearful view,
What you rehearse becomes the road you chose,
And freedom is the life you practice true.
…
DCG
“ A nervous system stuck in fear tends to fixate on problems. A more grateful state is better able to notice options, build relationships and better follow through. It broadens your attention and makes you more likely to take action, building that life that you really want. The secret is this, don’t spend your creative power studying the blueprint of what you don’t want. Spend that energy designing what comes next, because the life that you keep rehearsing in your mind is the life your choices begin to serve.”
— unknown