By Daniel Tuttle
Do you ever have days where you look up to God, Source, the light, the universe, whatever you call it, and ask: why does everything have to be so damn difficult?
Was I handed some kind of fate where I have to work ten times as hard just to make anything happen?
If you've found your way to this article, chances are you're a seeker like me. You've studied spirituality, metaphysics, energy. So you already know the standard answer:
"Well, Daniel, you have a big vessel in this lifetime. And with a big vessel comes the strength and capacity to overcome anything. That's the gift."
Somewhere along the way I decided that gift was something I had to endure. I believed the struggle was the price of being a channel for others in theirs.
Right?
But what if it didn't have to be so hard?
This is where my imposter syndrome shows up. I get to sit with clients every day and walk with them through their challenges. Often the guidance that pours through me for them is incredibly hard for me to hear myself. Sometimes it feels like too much even for me. That's when the voice kicks in: "You can't even take your own advice. Who are you to teach this?"
Because for better or worse, I'm someone who teaches consciousness. Awareness. Choice.
And I know it's all connected. I know life isn't meant to be this exhausting. I know that. But knowing something is one reality. Practicing it, trusting it and believing it all the way down is another.
Everything is a choice. I keep telling myself that. So instead of choosing for everything to be hard, what if I chose ease? What if I chose to focus on life's blessings, its beauty, its bounty?
After all, isn't gratitude the best way to set the tone? To lay the foundation and till the soil for greater good and greater opportunities?
So here's what I've been asking myself today: What is true joy? What is true happiness? What even is true gratitude?
And can you feel deep gratitude for your amazing, incredible life and still feel frustrated and overwhelmed?
From my own experience, the answer is a resounding yes.
We can hold two opposite emotions at the same time. That's something we humans have a hard time processing. And I think that's the practice.
I had an incredible weekend. On Saturday night I went to a dinner party with new friends, some young, some my age. They inspired me and met me in the value of shared life experience, even though we come from very different backgrounds. At that table were people who endured the war in Bosnia in the '90s, fled, and lived to tell the story. Across from me sat a 16-year-old, half Dutch and half American. His father is an epidemiologist, and he spent the first five years of his life in Malawi. Listening to him, I got to see life through a lens I will never know, God willing.
It was inspiring. It was humbling. Both at once. There it is again: two contrasting emotions, held at the same time.
Then on Sunday I watched my partner, Guillermo, compete in and finish a rowing race. I got to witness his love for the sport. Over this past year I've watched him grow and change, step into his own being and his own power through something he loves so remarkably. How lucky am I to share my life with someone who gives me so much certainty, in the future we're creating together and in my own?
I thought back to last year, the same race. Then it was such a struggle for him. This year it was lighter, because of how hard he's worked all year.
So I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror too. I gave myself permission to see how far I've come, in my strength, in my body, in my passions.
And last night I had the blessing of sitting with dear friends visiting Amsterdam. We talked about our shared experiences, our dreams, our goals.
I tell you all this because I wonder, in a perfect world, what would it be like to have days like these every day? Days spent with magical, powerful, beautiful souls who inspire us?
Why do we have to be weighed down by responsibility, by bureaucracy, by the need to perform our way to success?
So here's the question I'm sitting with: Is it possible to find ease, and maybe even joy, in the very moments when we feel most frustrated? When we're holding all these contrasting emotions at once?
That's what I'm bringing into my own journey of self-realization today.
And what if you could have the same authentic, divine connection you admire in others, the kind I felt with all those beautiful people this weekend, inside the systems you resist and react to? Inside the bureaucracy. The responsibility. The obligation.
Obligation. What an interesting word. Even the word itself carries such a heavy energy.
It takes me back to one of the first books I turned to when I was growing into my spiritual work: Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. In one passage, Neale talks about how frustrating it is to live in this reality and carry all these obligations. The response he receives changed my life.
God says, in essence: "Here's the problem. You've decided obligation is something you have to do. Something you're forced to choose, forced to be part of." Says who?
What if you switched the word obligation for opportunity?
So let's sit with that awareness today. What opportunities are available to me within the systems, the structures and the day-to-day obligations of the reality we've chosen?
And then, as if on cue, the universe answered.
While I was finishing this piece, I came across a poem I wrote sixteen years ago. On this exact day, 2 November 2010. Sixteen years. The same age as that young man across the dinner table. I'd forgotten it completely, and yet here it is, saying everything I've been trying to say:
Chance
2 November 2010
I saw a lady today, riding the train
The look on her face, was sullen and wane
Coming from the library, all checked out
Back to the hood, takin' her route
I looked at her book, bowed my head in dope;
The pages were filled, with passages of hope.
"How to deal with your Childs cancer" the binder screamed;
Into my heart, as my soul was reamed.
All of a sudden, I couldn't help but think
How petty and futile my actions can sink.
It's not just her child, but mine and yours
Under the umbrella of light, unity pours
There is not one, we can think to ignore
Regardless the effort, involved in the chore.
Her library book, reminded me of chance
How the opportunity always, lies in our hands.
* A note on "dope": in 2010, that was my word for being stopped in my tracks. Dumbfounded. Sobered. I've left the poem exactly as I wrote it, in the voice I was speaking through then.
The opportunity always lies in our hands. I knew it then. I'm choosing to remember it now.
Your invitation for today: Pick one obligation on your list. Just one. Before you do it, ask yourself: Where's the opportunity in this? Then notice what shifts.
With gratitude, and a little frustration too,
Daniel