let’s invite an unfathomably large
amount of water to crash into us
with incredible destructive force—
let’s start our own flood !!
our flood’s scope will be that of the individual;
haven’t you already felt it necessary reset yourself entirely?
A flood is devastating, yes—and cataclysmic destruction often serves as a catalyst for renewal.
step 1. move very, very far away
The simplest way to trigger your very own, personal, flood is to move across the country. Or maybe out of the country. I think the more unexpected a location, the better. The more unfamiliar the territory, the bigger the flood.
Moving away from home flips everything you thought you knew about the world upside down—the ways I’ve been shaped by new neighbors, new friends, and new lessons are remarkable to me.
Moving away is like repotting a plant. Sometimes the roots are simply coiling in on themselves with nowhere to grow, and that’s when it’s time to move on.
And ultimately, moving away is hard, heartbreaking work. It’s hard work to change; it’s hard work to flood the home you built for yourself and reconstruct it from scratch.
ok! fair enough
step 2. discernment
Learn to discern between what YOU want vs. what other have potentially conditioned you to want. This is tricky. I find it so hard to constantly meet myself here—checking my internal compasses—but it’s necessary if we want to change and grow towards the sunlight 🌱
I try to carve out unstructured time every week to sit with myself and draw, or write, in my notebooks… I keep a running list called “things i want”
These are never material items, but
I want to continue not knowing
I want to sit beside something really old and try to listen for a while
I want to be brave
I want to pay a visit to some old friend i knew when i was fourteen, or maybe just myself at fourteen
step 3. let yourself get fed up!
I’ve discovered another way to discern what it is we really want is to listen to anger.
Frustration points us towards what isn’t working. It points towards friction. I learn so much from my anger/frustration when I choose to listen to it, rather than shove it into a little box. After all, if you’re trying to start a flood, this implies that some force is probably necessary.
Reaching a tipping point, being so frustrated with my choices (or lack of choices, my un-intentionality) helped me recognize I want to destroy certain aspects of my life that aren’t serving me anymore.
Anger is a monster in my heart that I often avoid still—and when I avoid it, it breaks up into tiny little shards of anxiety that come in and weaken my spirit daily… so I think allowing it to exist, acknowledging it, and grappling with it… well it shows us what we don’t want in our vicinity, in our community.
And this, in turn, spurs us into action, to begin the process of de-cluttering (flooding) 🌷
step 4. if you’re in school, graduate
I’m sorry—there’s simply nothing like graduating and having to build your life up from scratch outside of the organized structures of school… nothing has taught me more about my weaknesses, strengths, and values (except for maybe moving away—see Step 1)
Graduate, and take a gap year if you’re between degrees. A gap year, a year outside of academics, is like opening the dam and letting the water of yourself crash into yourself. That’s all I can say about it.
step 5. decide, commit, create something
If you have nothing to do, you may as well do what occurs to you ! Isn’t there maybe something you’ve been putting off for a while now? a book? an album? something as simple as a poem or a song? it’s ok, if you start chipping away at it, you might be surprised at what changes within you, what doors open, and what is revealed to you through your work (and when I say work, I mean the work of creation, not “work” in the capitalism sense)
Art-making isn’t exclusively about self-expression, it can be about curiosity, self-interrogation, and exploring the world that extends far beyond yourself. Searching both interally and externally… far and wide… it sparks questions that trigger the flood. Or maybe the flood is already well on it’s way—maybe you’re already in the middle of your flood.
Today, well into what feels like a flood of my own making, I feel small and brittle. Honestly, I feel like cold air has hardened me into someone unrecognizable. When I left for graduate school, I knew I wanted change and challenge, I knew I wanted to grow—but I didn’t recognize just how destructive uprooting your life can be. A flood often leaves behind damaged property beyond repair, missing possessions, missing parts of ourselves.
It also, maybe, leaves behind a canvas—a cleared space in which we can create. I don’t think I’ll ever find what I lost; I know I can’t ever go back to who I was at 18, 19, or even a year ago at 24—but I do get to choose who I am today, and will be tomorrow. Even if I don’t know what comes next/where to go from here.
It’s a privilege to not know what comes next; for how much of history did people have their lives predetermined for them? I don't know what comes next. That is something to find joy in.
