Tag: life

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terror and joy

is it possible that we make our lives small because all the opportunities and richness and potentiality are just… overwhelming? terrifying? maybe we are afraid that our own lives will drown us if we enter them fully.

sometimes I see these little glimpses, this verge, right there… and I– step back. it so stops my heart– or starts it pounding in the most disturbing way. of course, I must collect myself. I must have myself well in hand. I turn away. hesitate and then the moment passes away.

this horace quotation that came to me in a.word.a.day recently is just kicking my ass all over the place lately–

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.”
-Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)

I feel like I’m standing on that river bank, just waiting, so afraid to get wet– and the river keeps running by, just laughing and crying at me hanging there as if there were such a thing as the opportune moment. there is grace in diving.

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random life stuff

twice in the last few days I’ve had people remark to me on how I’m always moving, work hard, etc.– this from random  folks who have no real stake one way or another in flattering or insulting or really passing any sort of judgment– they’re just commenting on something that looks weird and noteworthy to them, one of the the samples ladies, one of the shipping guys– and I’m sure part of it is cultural: I’m a whitegirl, driven by that ingrained protestant work ethic fer shizzle; but part of it is also personal– I’m just like that– a few years ago I articulated it for the first time: I have two speeds, Go and Idle. lately I’ve been spending my downtime in wicked Idle, like seriously– mostly hanging out in bed, reading, snacking, watching movies, reading and reading some more, snoozing. and then I get up and Go again. lately I’ve been thinking a bit about how I don’t do all of this very strategically or smartly– I could, say, take some of that downtime and allocate it to rather less down activities, in my own interests, say, improving myself, my station in the world, and so on. I’m quite sure that a lot of other people with my amount of education are working a lot smarter than I am, and this troubles me somewhat, that I runrunrun but not to any particularly chosen or outlined ends, only expending energy and then recovering and doing it all over again. but, too, this is a particular phase– I am nothing if not superduper phasey. generally speaking, the last few days I’ve felt remarkably calmer and more peaceful and even happy with the course of my life– it’s nothing that I’ve envisioned or plotted or planned and it’s awfully hairbrained and kind of pointless in some ways and could use some tweaking and tucking, but really, yknow what? it fits. this is the way I am. and it’s not all bad. hello, perspective from today.

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breathe

this morning I suddenly feel better. I didn’t expect to feel better, still not having done the Big Things on my sword of damocles to-do list– but apparently I have done other things and other things have rolled around somewhat– and there is, I think, a lesson in this which I offer up to you out there in case it gives something good at a time when you might need it.

some of us, who knows, maybe many of us, have a lot of monsters in our heads. all sizes and shapes with very pinchy snarly teeth. sometimes they get the upper hand and you see all the world through their grinchy little eyes: you look up into snow falling under streetlights in the evening, and you do not think how beautiful— instead you think I am as fleeting and insignificant as one of those flakes of ice. you find no consolation in the complex architecture of frost. you say to yourself I MUST pull myself up by my boot straps! only to argue physics and logic with yourself.

there are different kinds of forward propulsion. I had some significant figures in my younger days show me a lot of the fist-down-on-the-table variety. boom boom. you WILL do x or y! to which it was all too easy to conform on the surface while underneath saying no, I WON’T— thereby splitting myself in two time and again.

I am trying to learn another kind of forward propulsion: the loving open hand on my own back, propelling me forward; the hand in my own guiding me, walking with me. and, yes, I know how late it is in the game to be learning, to be studying these things, and there is shame and embarrassment in such an enterprise– but by golly I’m fighting for my life.

and so the lesson I am taking this morning, once again and all over again for the hundredth time as if for the first time, is this: gentle steps. rather than setting up the To Do list monumentally in such a way that it will make me, once again, dig in my heels and retreat under the covers with a book, going la la la, I’m not listening— instead. small steps. like writing in the paper journal every morning, once again. (it’s been much much too long.) allowing myself some timeouts without belaboring the self-recrimination. keeping getting up in the morning and going to work, where sometimes I do some things that feel good and right and leave me feeling stronger with important realizations about myself. keeping looking up at that snow under the streetlights– in time I will see it again in all its glittering splendor and realize I am breathing and breathe.