1. Listen to the wisdom of 4 year olds.
2. Dance freely without worry about what you look like.
3. Curl up on the couch and let someone sing you to sleep.
4. Say yes when you want to and no when you don’t.
5. Go on secret missions with young friends (like my dear John) to leave message of hope around the city with sidewalk chalk.
6. Welcome someone who needs you into your home.
7. Then, let the kitten sleep on your bed (as if you have a choice).
8. Call your cousin (or whoever it is in your life who you know loves you to your toes).
9. Take pictures of everyone you love and the things that fill your heart with gratitude.
10. Drink chai tea.
11. Laugh completely and entirely–don’t hold back, even if you need to lay down on the floor and tears are pouring down your cheeks.
12. Take a long bath followed up with a warm shower.
13. Skinny dip every chance you get.
14. Read out loud. Snuggle long after the little one has fallen asleep.
15. Make guacamole and eat the entire bowl–or save some for lunch. Or eat the entire bowl and then make some more for lunch.
16. Get lost in a book.
17. Take the metro. Take walks.
18. Tell the people you love that you love them–even when, especially when, it might seem like it is coming out of the blue.
19. Get new glasses so that you can see clearly.
20. Clean out the closets. Clean the floors. Clean the bathtub.
21. Head out into the woods and stay there for a few days.
22. Cry when you need to.
23. Play your guitar–loudly (even if its badly). Play only for yourself if you want.
24. Wade in the water’s edge. Let your feet sink into the mud and get all sticky.
25. Move into action even as you sit in stillness.
26. Cook dinner with your dear ones and eat it outside.
27. Go out for icecream and let it drip down your face and get on your nose.
28. Drive to a farm and pick fresh berries, peaches, plums or whatever is in season.
29. Light candles and say prayers just sit silently and hold hard moments for what they are. Trust that “All will be well and all manner of things shall be well.” Whisper it until you believe it.
30. Throw your arms around the people who delight you.
Inspired by the gorgeous Jen Lemen and my dear cousin Leenie both who have reminded me that the only time I am ever unhappy is when I find myself wanting the joy I don’t have and ignoring the crazy joy exploding around me.
Today was the first day of school in our neck of the woods. While I mourn the passing of summer (with her promise of long lazy days, nights by the pool, adventure and breaks in the routine) I also relish the return to rhythm and routine that the school year brings. The smell of freshly sharpened pencils and brand new notebooks instills in me a sense of calm and order and new beginnings. Its an opportunity to start fresh, develop new habits and start all over again.
Last night Max and I emptied out his backpack–turned it completely upside down. We clean it out at the end of the school year, but it always seems that there are things we are not quite ready to let go of that somehow linger all summer. Sure enough, there on the floor, were the forgotten notes, cherished book, favorite pencils, stubby erasers and half eaten cookie that showed that second grade was a year well lived. We sorted out a few pencils for the pencil jar in the kitchen, put the book on the shelf and threw the rest away. We shook out whatever crumbs remained clinging and declared a fresh slate as we loaded the backpack with the new pencil box, highlighters and loose leaf paper that his teachers asked us to supply.
I think this time of year is all about just that–permission to let go of whatever is no longer needed in order to really begin again. To start anew, not at the same place but with all the years of wisdom behind us. To carry the accumulated wisdom forward without all the half eaten cookies and stubby broken erasers to weigh us down.
This weekend, I was furiously trying to organize our house to make way for our babysitting coop that uses our house as homebase during the school year. For some reason, I found myself deep into my bedroom closet. I think I had gone there in search of a hanger and decided to donate one thing to Goodwill. It’s no lie when they say that one thing leads to another because an hour and a half later I was still at it. You would be amazed at what I found was still in my closet. Not half-eaten cookies but clothes and boxes of letters and other items that should have been moved long ago. But as I put each item in the appropriate pile, I knew full well why it still lurked all dusty in my closet. I must not have been ready to let that thing go. Its OK. Its going now.
Clearing is an iterative process. I let go and create space. The spaciousness that’s created gives me courage and suddenly find I am able to let go of so much more. And so it goes, every fall, every spring, every time I need some room, every time I need a change. I let go of what no longer serves me to make room for what I need to learn.
I find that this physical tangible exercise of cleaning out my closets and emptying Max’s backpack has a momentum of its own. It’s no lie when they say one thing leads to another. Suddenly I am inspired to leave behind all sorts of things that no longer fit me: old stories, old habits, old fears, and even some old dreams I long ago outgrew.
And you my friend, what are you letting go of, so that you might begin anew? How do you prepare for the new learning that will come your way?
I like to think of myself as a glass half full, optimistic kind of girl. And in many ways that’s right.
But every now and again, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize how I easily I can get stuck in the “no” position. Perhaps it is because life can sometimes get complicated and whatever is in front of me starts to feel impossible and undoable. It’s easy to get tired in that place and start to think that we are in a survival mode. Suddenly I start to look at everything through that lens. Like a deer caught in the headlights or a warrior fending off an attack, I start to put up a shield, trying to limit, control, keep the chaos to a minimum.
When I am in that space, the answer to most questions suddenly becomes no.
Are you coming north for a visit? (no–can’t afford it)
Are you coming over tonight? (no–I am too tired)
Can we go to the pool? (no–I have chores to do)
Can I have an Italian ice? (no–because I said so)
There are lots of good reasons to say no. Personal safety. Health. Exhaustion. A need for some quiet time. A need to set boundaries. No is a perfectly good answer to lots of questions, especially when it is well thought through. The problem is that I can sometimes, without thinking, start to wield “no” like a shield–an attempt to block out life until I can get a grip. No becomes the default position out of fear. No can be an excuse not to move forward, to embark on adventure or connect in a new way.
And then I wonder why I can sometimes find myself feeling stuck.
Over and over I have learned that the way I create magic in my life is when I thoughtfully and deliberately, open up and say yes. Say yes to impossible things. Say yes to thinks that make no sense but just seem right. Open our heart, open the door, open the house and say welcome–come in, yes, please, do. The best decisions in my life miraculous did not start with an anguished debate but rather unfolded from a simple yes. Without fail, over and over again I learn that simply switching from a no to a yes frame of mind is a key that unlocks a world of magic. Sometimes the best way to shift your entire outlook, your entire heart, your entire mood is to simply say yes.
Especially when the question is something like this:
“Mama…I love her so much. Can we please take her home?”
Saying yes changes everything.
It gives someone hope. It creates the space for love. It opens the doors to miracles.
Welcome Tabitha Tessa Casey-Bolanos. Many adventures await you and your boy.
This may sound absolutely crazy but it is totally true.
There is a major intersection I need to pass almost every day. On the corner is a restaurant–and old fashioned inn. They have a pretty garden which does a lot to brighten up an otherwise dismal urban corner, full of concrete and speeding cars. This time of year that garden is full of sunflowers.
Every time I pass, I comment on them, exclaiming to Max (my perpetual passenger) “Look! Look how spectacular these sunflowers are!” These particular ones have flowers the size of my head. Their stems reach at least eight, maybe ten feet tall, maybe even taller. I have never gotten out of my car to stand along side them (though I have secretly longed to do so). Its not good “busy intersection” etiquette. And the garden is private property and all that.
One recent morning, Max and I passed by in the early morning. The intersection was not terribly busy, even though he and I were running late. As we passed those sunflowers, whose heads are now bowing, whose leaves are now yellowing, I said one more time, “Look Max…Look at sunflowers.”. From the back seat a tired Max piped up. “Mom, you always are telling me to look at the sunflowers. Why?”
“Well,” I said, “Because they are beautiful.”
“But they are dying” he said. “”Look, that one is almost dead”.
“They are not dying”, I said. “They are changing. They are giving their power back to the earth, and they too will go there and their leaves and roots and decaying bits and parts will be food for the plants who grow next. And next year they will return again. There are always sunflowers here every summer.”
We turned the corner and I took one last fleeting look. “Oh how I love them,” I sighed. “The sunflowers are so beautiful.”
And just like that a voice strong and clear but gentle and sweet rose up from my heart and whispered to me, “And the sunflowers think you are beautiful too!”. I immediately, without warning started to cry.
Several years ago, during the height of my grief over my marriage, I would go out to my yard an sit with my back against the oak trees. It was the oak trees that initially attracted me to this house–their ancient arms seem to embrace the whole property. This space feels held, if a little shady. It is always several degrees cooler up on my hill than in the rest of town. And I always feel protected. Whenever I would lean my aching back against that tree, I felt like a little girl leaning against her strong grandfather. I knew I was safe.
I have been thinking a lot this week about our relationship to the plants around us. Perhaps it is the fact that I am keeping a garden now. My veggies are not just something that show up neatly stacked at the grocery story, or charmingly arranged at the farmers market, but they are growing in the ground before my eyes. I planted tiny seeds, watched with surprise when shoot grew, was amazed as I saw the plants grow up before me. For the longest time my chili plants seemed to do nothing and then all of a sudden after weeks and week of heat they took off to the races and are now laden with fruit. When I pick them, I realize that something living, something which is always changing, is now changing to the point where it can share with me. It drew some power from the earth and now offers gifts. I will take those gifts and consume them and the power will be transformed. I will be transformed and the cycle will continue.
What i do with that power is up to me. Will I be as generous as the cherry tomatoes that never seem to stop? Will I be as sweet as the carrots which keep surprising me with the size of their carrot roots/hearts? Will I be as beautiful as the sunflowers that take my breath away no matter how heavy the traffic? Will I offer shelter and protection like the oaks.
Photo by Max
I am at a place in my journey that requires a tremendous amount a patience.
For two years I have been dealing with a an absurd and scary financial problem. This was not a problem that I created (I have plenty of those too) but one which arose from my ex-husband and his inability to deal with things that were his responsibility when he left. One which arose from his deciding he didn’t need me. One that arose when he stopped doing what I had faithfully done for him, year after year. Its a problem that would push my buttons in the best of circumstances. But that fact that it has become mine costs me. It costs me dearly.
Most days it just floats about, an annoying ghost that hangs over my left shoulder, but on some days it knocks me to the floor and leaves me feeling powerless. This is not an insurmountable problem but solving it has not been simple. In fact, solving it myself requires energy (and resources) I simply don’t have and every baby step I have had to take has left me drained and completely laid out flat. I have been at his mercy and each time he doesn’t do what he needs to do, I find myself abandoned yet again, reliving the sorrow and the loss that happened when we split. It has required me to dig deep on the side of faith. It has required me to threaten things I never imagined having the threaten. It has left me shaken in the part of my heart that is about being held, nurtured and care for–about my personal sense of safety. It has left me wrung out.
The specifics are not important. The problem will resolve itself one way or another I am sure. The fact though is that at the end of the day, when its all taken care of, I will have paid dearly, at the very least with a piece of my soul. The waiting for the someday when it will no longer be a problem is killing me.
Some days I feel like a total whiner. On the scale of all the problems faced by mothers in the world, this problem seems small. I can afford to feed my child and keep him warm. I am able to keep him safe from war and criminal elements. We have our health, our intelligence and each other.
Other days though I feel so completely alone and overwhelmed. On the scale of all the problems faced by mothers in my community, a mecca of mini-vans and juice boxes and college savings plans, this one seems unbelievably huge. And so out of my control. It can leave me feeling like I don’t belong. And stuck. And left behind.
Sometimes I feel as though for the last 2 years I have been parked at a crossroads on my path, waiting for a parade of milling sheep to go by. They just keep coming, those sheep, with my ex-husband’s financial issues tied onto them like saddle bags. And I am waiting.
I ask myself what is there to be learned from this situation. It can’t be that I need to learn to work harder. I have worked myself practically to death. It can’t be that I need to learn to be smarter. I have stretched my brain as far as it will go. And the only thing I can possibly belive is this: patience.
Patience is a hard one for me. Not the kind of patience that requires loving attention, like the patience we have for our children.
I am talking about the kind that simply is willing to wait, to take baby steps, to do things in such tiny doses that they feel like they carry you nowhere. I am a big change kind of girl–I like to see results. When I make a decision I move, boldly, no waiting around. I measure the actions I take against what I have earned and make corrections along the way. To be so way-laid and trapped by the actions of another is excrutiating. And really, more than anything, that is what brings me grief in all this. That while this problem remains unsolved, my life seems stuck and despite my best efforts I can’t unstick it.
If I am honest, I will admit that my inability to be patient is sucking the happiness out of me. There I said it. I don’t know what realization is scarier: that it is my own inability to be patient that is causing me despair, or that it really is sucking the joy out of my life. Either way its a no-win situation.
And so I think it is time for me to learn to just sit. If you asked me even one day ago what I was hoping for my birthday I would tell you that what I most wanted was movement. But the truth is, movement will only get me a little farther up the road. What I really need is to learn to be happy in stillness, no matter what life brings. I do a lot of talk about meditation and pull it out when crises hit but as a daily practice it is nowhere to be seen. Thats why for my birthday I will be going here, to sit for the day, to take a plunge into patience, to learn again (and again) how to just sit.
I have a long story I will tell some day about what led me to this camera and what I am doing with it. But for now lets just leave it at this. It is healing my heart in a profound way, helping me bridge a divide between resentment and gratitude. I have spent a lot of time wondering how to jump this river, how to get past a blindness, a stubborn wall. This camera is teaching me how to see.
It has long been a dream of mine to own a good camera and to learn to take pictures. But it was also not something I had been contemplating seriously until…well…I did.
Everyday since I got it I have taken pictures of that which I love. And I have been blown away by beauty–seeing people and the simple things in my life as though for the first time. It is a practice right now. This learning to see. On this rocky road fraught with obstacles I don’t know how to navigate, it is the only way I know to breathe into gratitude.
Something profound is shifting in me and I can only whisper a sweet alleluia and prayer of thanksgiving.
Yesterday I was rear-ended. I was on my way from taking Max to hockey camp, on my way into work. A little bit ahead of schedule but still later than I liked. I drove the route that I thought would involve the least amount of traffic, the one that would be me there the quickest. I was ready to turn onto the road that would carry me in the direction of work. I was stopped, waiting for the cars to pass me when it happened.
I was jolted, a bit addled, not entirely sure what had happened, momentarily confused. I sat for a moment that felt like a lifetime before getting out of my car. I checked my bumper I wandered back to my car. I sat down. Still in a fog, not entirely sure what to do.
The stranger who hit me got out of her car and came running. “I am so sorry” she said. “Are you OK?” I swallowed my initial instinct to wave her off with assurances that I was fine. I wasn’t entirely. “I am a bit wigged out” I admitted. She was near tears. And pregnant. “Me too” she said and I noticed how frail she looked, how shocked and sad . We moved our cars out of the intersection and into a church parking lot.
When I stepped out of my car, that second time, as my head and heart cleared I knew the only response to this situation was gentle kindness. She was OK. I was OK. We were both scared, both shaken. We both needed nothing but understanding. The only response was to wrap my arms around this stranger, hug her hard and tell her it was all OK, that all would be well. To soothe and be soothed.
We fumbled for our information, talked about her baby to be born, begged each other to go to a doctor. We hugged some more and talked about how pregnancy will make you cry. We consoled one another and spoke our gratitude for being OK. There was no accusations about sudden stops or not paying attention. There was no defensiveness. We both instinctively knew that it would help neither of us to rehash what had happened with a goal of assigning blame. The accident was over. Now there were just two people in a messy moment, with each other on the side of the road, in a moment of confusion and fear, in full realization that kindness is the only thing that would fix the situation.
Later in the day we called each other’s cell phones. “What did the doctor say?” we asked. “How are you feeling?” We were happy to learn that all was well, continued to speak words of kindness and empathy. I hung up feeling warmed and cared for and not at all hit.
How often do we bump into people, only to inflate like puffer fish, spiky and defensive, fearfully protecting ourselves from the wrath that might come in response to our mistake? How often are we bumped into and lash out–out of fear, out of hurt? How is violence simply an outgrowth of that–our hurt, our fear, our need to protect ourselves, spiraling out of control?
What would happen if we instead shifted out of defensiveness and into kindness, even when we are slammed from behind unexpectedly. Even when we make a mistake that could cost us? What if we forgot all our fears at the moment and just breathed out kindness. What miracles could occur? I can’t stop thinking about how our world might be different.
As I stood on the side of the road with my arms around a stranger I thought how lucky I was to be given the gift of connection that day. Here was a beautiful human being, vulnerable and rushed and a mama just like me. We might never have met, might never have realized that the person driving behind me on that busy road was so kind. I might never have been tapped on the shoulder to be reminded how kindness changes everything.
Every connection starts with a bump, some harder than others. Human connection starts with a touch–how we chose to react will determine whether we destroy or care for one another, will determine the fate of our tribe.
Its an important lesson to learn.
That sometimes the most beautiful innocence can be born from deep suffering, desperation and ugliness
That nothing is ever one thing and even the most exquisite joy and breathtaking beauty can be punctuated by sadness and loss and even the most heartbreaking grief can be tinged with a rosy kindness
That laughter and silliness and ridiculousness is sometimes the only answer to heaviness
That my heart will whisper to me exactly what I must do next
That angels most certainly must exist
That I have sisters who I will walk with and they will not leave me and I will not leave them because our paths are intertwined whether we like it or not (though we mostly like it)
That love (not sappy silly love by lionness roaring love) is alchemical — it is the magic ingredient and while it sounds so trite its true
That the youngest among us are extremely powerful and hold all the wisdom that we forgot
That miracles are like tsunamis and leave disasterous messiness in their wake and it is a saint’s job to clean up what comes behind, physically hold the wounded together to sutcher their souls.
Saints also bring lemon cake and stand on chairs tip toe to hang paper hearts from the ceiling
My heart is feeling both full and heavy today after standing with my arms spread wide open in a thunderstorm and letting the rain pour down. I would love to know what you know now–let our collective wisdom carry us.
The day we landed in Mexico for the first time, we sat in the formal living room in the Mexico City house, cooled by one solitary fan and drank cold coca colas on sticky vinyl covered couches. My legs, made bare by my pretty little sundress stuck to the plastic and I looked longingly at the plush velvet beneath the clear barrier. “Protection”, Juan leaned over and whispered to me, reading my mind. “When something is this precious, we can’t afford to leave it unprotected.”
From my perch on my plastic velvet throne something magical caught my eye. In a living room that was rather sparse, a simple table, a lamp nothing more, the corner exploded in decoration. A waist high table was filled with fresh flowers, plastic flowers, candles burning despite the sun which bleached out the room, red beaded lamps, pictures of saints in gilded frames, ancient toys, figurines carved out of wood and stone. I got up and wandered over, mesmorized. Juan followed me and touched me on the shoulder. “It’s my tia’s altar”, he said. I had never seen anything so gaudy and so beautiful.
Before we left to travel to Oaxaca, Juan’s tia called us over to the altar for our blessing. She pulled out a fresh candle and lit it with ceremony, laid her tiny hands on our heads towering above her. She said prayers for a safe journey and with the saint’s protection firmly in place, she finally let us go out of her watchful sight. When something is this precious, we can’t afford to leave it unprotected.
I was swept up in the mystery of this magical country, I would soon call my second home. I loved, and became a student of the altars I saw built everywhere–in businesses, by roadside stands, in formal rooms and in the corner of shacks. A place for the Virgin to watch over and bless all who labored, loved and lingered there. Yet, the altars struck me as charmlng, antiquated, habits of old ladies with time on their hands, connections to a superstitious fate-based culture, a culture where angels and demons made choices instead of people and gods were arbitrary and mean in how they doled out joy and pain.
When I saw little altars constructed by friends of mine back home, I thought of them as glorious art pieces. A showcase of spirituality. I thought they were things constructed like window dressing to declare one’s love of God. I didn’t judge them, I was enthralled, in love, caught up in them. But I saw them as “extras” as “statements” as artful expression.
That was until the bottom fell out, after that night when Juan whispered to me that he was leaving me. That was until I was plunged head first into the realization that all my expecations and illusions about how my life would play out were dashed.
Night after sleepless night, I found myself whispering prayers in the dark to my tia’s Virgencita, the only woman who I thought might be able to hold my pain. Anxious hands, flitted about while my words poured forth, as though the very emotions, heart breaking needed to make themselves real and physical. One night I woke up and I stumbled into the living room. I suddenly remembered my sister in law, constructing her “Day of the Dead” altar for her young daughter, creating a space to grieve and honor her short life, to give thanks to her children who lived. Old toys and pieces of birthday cake and candy–a celebration of her life, an acknowledgment of her death, a pleading for the safety of her remaining three children.
And suddenly I understood what drove her to create her altar each year–what mad forces drove her forward through tears and turmoil as she laid the table cloth and arranged each item. I found the handthrown clay Virgen de Assumption I had purchased from a local potter in Oaxaca, moved her off her spot in the background of a shelf on a waist high table. I scrambled for a tea light. With a flashlight I went outside and cut wilting flowers from my garden, shoving them into a jelly glass. I found a picture of Juan and I happy and smiling and full of love and hope and bursting with joy at each other’s presence. With tears streaming down my face, I wrote a letter to sweet gods and goddess whoever would listen, imploring them to save my marriage, or at very least to protect my child, my heart, my sense that I would be OK. I thought about all of us flayed and bleeding. My heart whispered to me: When something is this precious, we can’t afford to leave it unprotected. And then I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke, I arose with a new peace. I had found a place to park my grief, to concentrate my dream, to make sacred my worst fears and deepest desires. And suddenly, I had found the strength to go on and to bear life as it unfolded, however it unfolded.
In the last six years, I have constructed countless altars. I take them down and refresh them frequently. When I am going through transition or transformation, their creation guides me. They are not art or window dressing or decoration. They are not a statement about my belief in god. They are a survival skill. An anchor. A thing I do so that I can keep going, despite the chaos and uncertainty and pain and messiness that I experience day after day living life on the edge. I currently have four in my house. Each one is place to hold my fears, my dreams, to learn to trust. I have one dedicated to my community, another to my tenuous and turmoil filled relationship with God and the Universe, my doubts about Her/His intentions, my questions and struggles. I have one dedicated to following my path–where I can park those fears that come up when I listen to my heart. And I have one, tucked away in my bedroom which hardly anyone ever sees, my most private space where my heart dwells. Each one is a place where I can acknowledge, grieve and celebrate. Where I can concentrate my prayers and honor the fears that try to protect me. Each night I light the candles. And then, I can say to my fears, the ones who try and protect me from life’s sorrow. “Stay here and rest, my loves. I must go out and bear life without you in the way.”
On Monday, a young teenage friend of mine set off for the journey of a lifetime. Headed to Rwanda to follow his path, I know his tender heart will see and experience both extraordinary beauty and pain. His mother, so strong, swallows her worry and speaks out loud over and over why this trip is good for him. I too, find myself thinking of him constantly, my prayers of protection, my pleas that he will find mentors to help him process what his tender heart experiences rising up and clouding my thoughts. Sunday night as I wandered through the grocery store, I passed the Latino section and saw the guardian angel candles–the very same ones with their paper wrappers and baroque images of an fair haired angel guiding a child that my tia places on hers whenever we set off from Mexico. The very same ones she lights when we leave her. I bought two, and placed the first on my community altar.
Monday morning, bright and early, I walked to my friend’s house. His parents just back from the airport were upbeat but strains of anxiety showed around their eyes. “This may be corny,” I said “but I brought a candle. To protect your boy. Its a space to hold the fear I know you have. I have one burning in my house for him too.” Furiously we searched for matches and lit it, said a little prayer and then went on with our day. Parking our grief and our worry so we could move on, but knowing full well that our hearts’ love had been concentrated and sent out like a magical golden net to protect him while he walked his new tightwire. When something is this precious we can’t afford to leave it unprotected.
For my dear friends E and K who reminded me this week why I build my altars.
Update: As I finished this sentence my friend just appeared with her phone in hand so I could read the email her son had sent, describing a land that had already captured his heart. I am in tears with joy. If you keep an altar would you light a little candle on yours for a boy, so brave, so wise and so connected to his heart that he left his comfortable life here at 16 to answer the call to love? May he be held up and protected and carried through the countryside by hundreds of prayerful hearts.
I have taken the week off of work with week. Our babysitter is away visiting her family. This is not when we normally take our vacation–we hold out for cousins week each August. So instead, of using the week to escape my life, I am using it to delve more deeply into it. To do all the things I wished I could do if I wasn’t so occupied by my paid work. I have been anticipating it juicily. I feel I put off so much of my life while i am living it.
So often this last month, while battling against the assault of the end of the school year (with its performances, and picnics and celebrations and ceremonies) I would dreamily say, “I will get to THAT when it is all over and I take my week off”. I had a long list of chores, projects, playdates, and fun.
I had a bit of a panic as the week approached–as Friday signaled that “the week” had finally arrived. As I did the math, I had no idea how I would get it all done. Like a general, I pulled out spreadsheet and organized my time into neat little blocks.
But still it didn’t calm me. I was so afraid that the time would slip by and I would have missed it, missed my chance, missed my moment. Missed my juicy life. Missed my opportunities to delve deeply into all that I had put off until “just the right time”. Does this sound familiar?
So I made my schedule (because as we all know routine is soothing and good for children and adults alike), and then reminded myself that as long as I lived deeply in every moment I would have lost or missed nothing.
I am having to do a lot of reminding of myself. This week I am learning that no matter how wise I pretend to be, I can’t shake that habit of imagining a time in the (hopefully) not to distant future, when I will finally get it right, when a bell will ring, when the curtains will part and I will arrive at my perfect life. (I had somehow convinced myself that that time MIGHT just be at the conclusion of my week off).
Once upon a time I could have rattled off to you exactly what it would look like when I finally made it–about the job and the kids and the state of the house. Truth is, over the last 5 years that vision has gotten pretty muddied, but still, I can’t quite shake the feeling that some magical moment is right around the corner and when I turn it, my happily ever after will start.
I am (she says withe relief) no longer attached to one vision of how it might look, but still, there is still that striving, that sense that I am on my way somewhere and it will be my reward for the pain and the struggle and the heartache and all the soul work.
I have a mentor and soul sister named Kaiya. Whenever I mutter that “I am getting there” as I talk about my life she sits up very tall and looks at me very sternly. “There is no THERE baby girl.” she tells me. “There is no magical moment. The reward for doing your soul work is more soul work. The reward for eating healthily is craving more good food. The reward for learning to unconditionally love, messy and complicated people is another glorious day relating and learning from the same messy and complicated people. There is no “aha” moment when it will all make sense. So stop waiting for that moment and jump in. Thats it. Be here in this moment. In a comfortable room with a pleasant view. Sitting with someone you love. Talking about stuff that matters. Talking about stuff that is silly. This is it. This is your life. Its a good life. Enjoy it.”
OK. Thats great. I can sit and enjoy my life in slow motion. I have mastered the art of “letting it all hang out”. I have eased into being–just in a space and time, which is great. Except for when things need to be done. Except for when there are steps to take that may be hard or complicated and demand a lot of energy.
Its so hard for me to be action oriented but in the present. Isn’t that nutty? I am good at simply sitting in the moment, but I am so unpracticed at the idea of moving forward and taking action without any story about that action carrying me somewhere–without the belief that that action will help me somehow arrive. I find that I am either all blissed out in the now on my cushion or sitting in the sunshine or sitting with a good friend and tea or tequila or wrapped up in my down comforters with a great book. But doing things I need to do, that are scary and hard work–stuff like doing art, or writing something longer than a blog post, or taking steps to get to school–doing them for the sake of them, without a sense that they are worthy because they signal some implicit arrival. Doing them simply because they need to be done. That is so difficult.
This week, I painted my kitchen. Once upon a time I never would have gotten started with a painting project like this because it would have been wrapped up in a vision of a perfect house. I would have done the calculus and seen that week or even a few hours is not enough time to arrive at what I wanted and so I would have given up before even starting, paralyzed by what it would take to arrive. I decided I would just practice painting for the sake of it–with no attachment to a beautiful kitchen, or even a neat kitchen. I found it soothing and soulful and restful. I find that I am making progress step by baby step. I am painting my kitchen because it wants to be green. Not because I have any story about a clean kitchen or a beautiful kitchen or even about a kitchen that will be orderly or calm or in which I will live a more beautiful cleaned up version of my current life.
Its a balance that is complicated to find. Just like all the unpracticed people before me, I am failing more than I am succeeding but I am using this week, with its scheduled blocks of time and its chores and its wide open spaces to practice the art of realizing that I have indeed already arrived. With every breath I arrive over and over again.
