Feeling Our Way Through

We like to imagine life as a series of straight lines. Plans. Strategies. Maps with neat little labels: Here’s where you are. Here’s where you’re going. Here’s what to do if you get lost.

We like to imagine life as a series of straight lines.

Plans. Strategies. Maps with neat little labels: Here’s where you are. Here’s where you’re going. Here’s what to do if you get lost.

But most of the time, we’re simply groping through the dark.

No map. No tour guide. No neon signs blinking, “This way to fulfillment.”

Just our hands outstretched. With only our feelings to light the way.

When I was younger, I tried to think my way through life. Analyze enough. Strategize enough. My father used to say, “Make it a good day!” as I went out the door to school, and I embraced that. An agency over my day. Empowerment. Control enough variables and I’d crack the code.

But… life isn’t a code.

It’s a blindfolded dance in a cave you’ve never been inside before.

And more and more, I’m learning the truth: Sometimes feelings are the best compass we have.

(((Not every feeling, mind you.)))

Fear can trick us. Shame can cripple us. Nostalgia can seduce us into retracing old, dead paths.

But the deeper currents — the ones beneath the noise — they don’t tend to lie.

When something feels expansive?

When something makes you feel alive?

When it feels like a strange, giddy whisper saying, More of this?

That’s not a fleeting feeling. That’s the soul pointing north.

When something feels crunchy?

When it shrinks you?

When it fills your gut with that dull, low-grade dread?

That’s not nothing either.

That’s a quiet no thank you from the deeper parts of you.

I don’t know if we talk about this enough. We love to worship the mind, the plan, the blueprint. But in uncharted waters, no map exists. We have to feel our way forward. Touch the stones with your feet. Stub our toes. Sense where the current speeds up. Listen for the sounds that tell us we’re getting closer to the open ocean — or if we’re crashing toward the rocks.

And of course, it needs to be said, that feelings aren’t infallible.

Trauma distorts our compass sometimes. Old wounds muddy our receptors.

Feelings are data. Not commandments — but clues.

As the poet David Whyte said:

“The soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s.”

And the only way to live your own life in its fullest expression — the real, messy, electrifying one — is to feel your way toward it.

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Some of my life’s biggest (and most rewarding) shifts have been born out of intuition. Not the mind — the gut.

• Going to art school

• Chasing after Elyse, even though she had a serious boyfriend of 3 years

• Stepping into church leadership, believing I could save Christianity

• Launching my own business with no previous experience

• Stepping OUT of the church in solidarity with LGBTQ folks

• Investing in the cannabis company

• Buying our forever home

• Exploring the world of psychedelic therapies

• Leaving startups that feel wrong

• Firing famous clients…

The list goes on and on. In the moment, many of these choices made zero sense. They weren’t rational. They were transrational. They were born out of something outside of the thinking-mind.

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In a culture obsessed with “life hacks,” “optimization,” and “5-year-plans,” trusting your feelings can feel like heresy. But it’s one of the oldest instincts we have.

Before GPS. Before Google. Before spreadsheets weighing pros and cons.

There were only rivers and stars and bones that hummed with yes or no.

You’re not broken for needing to feel your way forward.

It’s how we were built.

It’s how we survive.

It’s how we find our way home.

with love and light,
-john