Spring equinox is just around the corner. As usual, I don’t feel ready. For the light, for the heat. For the expectations. Still, there is something stirring within me. My feet are yearning to tread the paths of forest and field. My lungs don’t agree, seeing as they’ve spent the past week attemting to cough themselves inside out.
My head leaps far into the future, for some reason. Panicking over how to spend this summer’s vacation. Fretting over whether I will live up to my new responsibilities at work. Worrying that I’ll look back at my life when I am old and regret that I didn’t produce anything of artistic value. Stressing over the fact that I will miss out on so many things.
I guess I’ve been preoccupied with the practicalities of moving to a new place for quite a while, putting all other thoughts of the future on hold. Now they’re catching up. It strikes me that the patterns are all too familiar. Even with everything I’ve got now: a home with hobbit-level coziness to call my own, a partner whom I love and trust completely, a steady job which is well-paid, fun and for a good cause, and a body which I truly feel at home in. Even with all this (and if you’ve known me for some time you’ll know that I don’t take any of these things for granted), so much of my mind is still occupied with worrying.
Maybe it’s a habit that’s become chronic due to a stressful life. Or maybe it’s brain chemistry dictated by my DNA. Baby, I’m the worrying kind, as The Ark would have it. But I really don’t have the energy for that shit anymore. My time is precious, and want to spend it on what I value most. And knowing my mind’s compulsions, I could choose not to give it so much attention. Planning overmuch, setting up goals and working out strategies for how to accomplish this and that, constructing a back-up scenario for every situation just feeds the obsession.
The future is gonna surprise me anyway, that much I’ve learned by now. And more often than not, the fucking-up of my plans will be for the better. The trickster deities sure know what they are doing, wise as they must be to the fact that a life without uncertainty would drive a person to self-destruct out of boredom.
The solution is evident: I must direct my attention elsewhere. Away from my ridiculous, churning thoughts. I must practice just being a body. My feet know how to, which is why they drag me out to rain-damp moss and naked trees painted golden by errant sun-beams for hours. I follow along, lungs wheezing and stopping to rest as if I were twice my age, even though my original plan was a ten-minute walk around the block.
Out there, it’s so much easier to see (or decide, rather) what is actually important. I slept outside a couple of weeks ago and woke up with a heart so full of light it kept me sane for days. There’s something about waking up in a forest that redeems my soul in a very straight-forward way. Here, here, here, it reminds me. Now, now, now. This is where your life is.
It occurs to me now what this spring is about. It challenges me to accept. In the growing light I can no longer cling to dreams about things, people or life as I have convinced myself they ought to be. So my body feels mostly like a puddle of goo right now, and I’m too exhausted to contribute much to anything. That’s the way it is.
It shall probably pass. And I am still able to cherich the warmth of a fire, the taste of a cup of tea, the wind and the sunlight against my skin and the craftsmanship of a really good story. Deep down I still love being alive.
Love and presence,
Tim
