Today was such a day of extremes.
Of clarity, surprise, disappointment, and sad goodbyes. And, being no spring chicken, knowing that other openings will soon follow on the heels of the sad goodbyes.
Today was a day of loving friends, wise practitioners ,and support and realization and acceptance, all within a few hours, where so many circumstances needed to change; and fast. Dizzying, which IS our lives, at times.
This aspect of big surprise and those remarkable moments....when so much suddenly becomes very clear.
It happens more often as we grow older.
As I am fond of saying, if we are lucky enough to be here long enough, it often gets tough.
Usually I am imagining the people I have known so very well, in the 70's and 80's and 90's.
But today I am thinking of so many dear ones I know, nearby and afar, who are in their 60's, like myself, and have been learning to deal with some of those great big elements of surprise.
I guess this is where having practiced learning to BE with WHAT IS comes in handy.
Sure, we can be a little in shock when surprise comes knocking at our door.
Be it a health challenge, a necessity for change in work or home or partner or loved one or a realization of illness that will very possibly bring us to the end of our days here sooner than we anticipate.
For who, I ask you, anticipates that just about anything will happen in OUR lives, versus someone else's? That's right. In our minds, from childhood, it all seems like its all going to happen to someone else.
Which is why, not to be macabre or pessimistic but lovingly pragmatic, I often give thanks in prayer or meditation or out loud with friends, my beloved, or clients, for all the things that are NOT happening in this moment.
Its important to not avoid sitting with what IS happening. But a bit after we have given ourselves the opportunity to feel and sit with and digest hard hard things and changes, it is also helpful to remind ourselves how we are in such good company when it comes to hard times in life. That some things WILL happen in our own lives. Which brings us, often, from denial and wishful magical thinking
(If I keep smoking without taking things to clean it out and I keep eating crappy hard to digest foods without compensating for that and I use RAID and commercial cleansers, but believe really really hard that I will never get cancer, that will be good enough). Yup.
to sitting up awake and aware, and choose to both relish all the wonder that fills our day, along with the really hard surprises, and to
choose to figure out ways of either changing harmful habits, or take things that compensate for them and then embrace the habits without rancor or shame. Because if its one thing I've learned, its that shame is the glue that attaches us relentlessly to habits. If you want to make SURE you continue to do things that are not the greatest, make sure to feel and sit in and roll about in...SHAME.
Its the coolest thing in the world to relish all the things that are great today, and then all the things that easily COULD be happening, that are not.
While looking eyes wide open at what is hard, and letting ourselves come to some modicum of 'Yes' about it.
For me, when hard things are realized, like health challenges and the necessity to work less and move my office home, I know it is not what others face. And I know it is sad and hard, that others have experienced the same or more difficult circumstances, and that I really will devote myself to head-on conscious awareness how I feel, so I can come out of it with the greatest capacity to be in the present moment, and appreciate it, as I can.
Today, having had a circle of practitioners/friends/devoted others provide the feedback I have been providing to others for years, I only now noticed how a dear friend experienced the very same event months back. I was shocked that, in the midst of so much, I didn't catch or manage to empathize with what this experience meant to them. Today I went back in my mind and remembered all the pieces, and settled into empathy with imagining what it had been like for them, while here they are, sending me loving empathetic notes, tender with such understanding.
Being here, we have such a wicked awesome funny odd weird learning curve, if we choose to.
I remember being 21, in college, part of a Women's Counseling Collective in Brattleboro, VT. Being embraced by all these women with degrees and licenses, as we met weekly and I intoned my belief that counseling others without my values interfering was possible.
Ah, sweet silly learning one!
And I remember as if it was yesterday sitting on the floor in a circle with all these experienced therapists,who were listening respectfully to this young upstart, and then allocating the no fee therapy to low income, in need clients. Who I too would wander out, through the wilds of Vermont, to listen to and support.
My whole life has been informed by the patient, respectful, generosity of those women, who could easily have been dismissive, impatient, sarcastic, or could have just laughed my idealism off.
So yeah, learning curve we can have. Learning curve is the most amazing thing. Learning curve fosters compassion for our selves, eagerness for being in the most difficult moment, imperfectly, without goal or anticipation of reward or improvement.
Learning curve devotees I meet by the legions, especially older people. Older than myself! Who have lived with that imperfect wisdom and been tempered by the winds and the tragedy, like some New England mountain range, worn but wizened.
Which is what I love about learning. And meeting face forward the events and surprises and hard times and resulting depth we each discover ourselves experiencing in our lives.
Of course, my motus is always 'Head for the woods', and so, after the weighing in of the wise loving ones I know, I did gather up my wild young pup and we went tromping through wide frozen melt, residual snow, past a frozen reservoir, whose inlet stream was flowing amber and singing.
The pup racing into the frigid waters with delight, spinning about in the air because he could not contain the loveliness.
The small Skunk cabbage peeking its way through the layers of last fall's leaves.
The singing of arriving birds.
The bright sun reflected and almost blinding in the stream.
The old Pines scent filling the air about us, as the wind streamed through the needles far above.
Hat on, frozen hands, earth still snow covered, March 24th, Shepherd racing about with glee...this is what feeds and repairs and heals me.
This is what enables me to turn back to all that life holds, and greet it and embrace it.
Each of us has our ways, and being a forest creature has always been mine.
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