The quiet moment when everything tips

Change rarely announces itself loudly. For me it was a conversation. An ordinary conversation, midweek, that I had no idea would shift something.

What was said stays with me. Only this much, it went differently than I had expected. Afterwards I sat in my car and looked through the windshield. A saying came to mind that I had heard a long time ago.

There is a reason the windshield is bigger than the rear-view mirror.

In that moment the thought was suddenly there, the one that was never allowed to get loud. Is this all there is?

I pushed it away at first. I am quite good at that.

Why I ignored it for so long

There is always something. Meetings, obligations, a to-do list that never gets shorter. The thought gets postponed. To the weekend, to the holiday, to someday when things calm down. But things never calmed down for me. And honestly, a part of me did not want to know too precisely. As long as you keep functioning, you never have to ask the question.

What happened when I listened

Listening did not mean throwing everything away. I decided nothing big that day. I only admitted that the question was there. That was already more than I had allowed before.

Since then I notice small things. That I read differently. That I look more closely when I travel. That I feel the difference again between 'do I want this' and 'am I supposed to want this'. And how much energy it had cost to simply keep functioning.

That saying about the windshield has not left my head since. There is just more room ahead than behind.

Whether this is the start of something, I do not know. I just think about it every day now, and that is exactly what I am holding on to here.