Note: I no longer use the foldedlife.com domain. I have migrated the contents of its About page to this post. I never felt totally comfortable with the name because folded could mean gave up, as in “folded your cards”. Oh, what am I saying, most people would read onlynowhere.com as “Only Nowhere”, which is kind of neat.
I didn’t realized what my problem was until my early thirties. I had been too busy with school and work to notice. I had been too focused on following the path my parents and society had expected of me: getting into a good college, graduating, getting a good job, and climbing the corporate ladder.
In the background, something was always nagging me. Something I ignored until I couldn’t anymore. Something missing. Something wrong. I blamed it on bad stuff happening to me. I blamed it on other people misbehaving.
But they weren’t my problem. My problem was allowing external happenings and other people to manage my life. My problem was abdicating my most important responsibility.
Life is messy. I had allowed life to have its way with me, pulling my attention in many directions. I was missing the point.
I had to learn to fold my attention back to myself. I had to practice focusing on what I could control, myself and my reactions to external events and people.
folded = “bent or rearranged into a flatter or more compact shape, typically in order to make it easier to store or carry”.
It was hard to do the above. And it still is. But only I can bend my life back into the shape I desperately need it to be.