Entering Change

How do we pack for the journey we're embarked on? I've begun today with a look over to the neighboring fields that once held cornstalks and are now lined with the nubs reminding me of yesterday. Looking towards winter in the Northeastern United States, there is talk of snow and cold, polar vortexes, and messy roads. The days at hand seem to be a wisp of what they were yesterday, cut short by the rotating of Earth's dance along its axis. These memories and images of the past linger in my body, almost in anticipating of the changes upon the communities nearby. Preparations seem to become ritual, as the leaves being raked become the song of the day.  

The journey seems never ending, and at once, always changing. Branches continue to grow on trees that have shed their leaves, and I am hearing talk of the coming holidays. Time seems to travel so fast, and with it, the movement of busyness of expectations and uncertainty. To slow down is to be unrealistic. What is enough for me? It seems as if longing for yesterday's return urges me to recreate the past for tomorrow. Yet today, today there is a song that I can sing. I learn it for tomorrow. Each verse of lines that rise and fall in harmony that the darker days mean an opportunity to carry more light for growing still.

Growing still, in movement rooted in what we live, is an opportunity to hear the days of our lives - moving and making peace as we live and strive for what's best. As I write from silence, it opens the window of the moment to a rush of what we have packed and what we receive. What we bring and give will enter fully into what we have to work with. 

   

In Front Of Our Eyes

After wandering in this year for awhile, I've noticed that the calendar year is about to cycle back to it's beginning. What was once starting is now ending, at least that's what it seems. With the paradox of beginnings and endings, there is always an unknown. As if to chart the future, I chronicle the past in hope of understanding where I as a person and we as a species have been. I have written much about the happenings that bring me out of the past and into the future. What stands before me is the present.

How should I create a present out of all the media that arrive at my feet from the past. This "baggage" might actually be a toolbox or backpack of knowledge. In front of my eyes is the view in any direction I choose to look. There is a way that I choose to live, with the perspective I have gained from sharing and being shared with, that creates a life. There is so much creativity that abounds in front of my eyes and into my ears. As I receive, so I also give.

To participate in this cycle is to notice what I have and to know the impact of having it. To speak broadly, to have friendship is to have someone in my life in whom I can have the joy of sharing interests with. The more it is developed, the more the friendship may acquire a greater connection from deepening a bond with experiencing life together.

There is no concrete way this can be done, except by beginning here-wherever here is for you. We will never experience something exactly as someone else does. We can only taste and know that what we experience should be out of our hopes, our yearnings, out of what we find good - and begin to engage in making this thing called a future, in remembering the past with the dignity of all its humanity and worldliness and to continue the journey.

Take Time To Live

"The days are long, but the years are short." Gretchen Rubin

Some days seem to be so full that to take time to breathe is to waste the time that could be used doing what comes next. There is always more to do, always more to see, feel, hear, taste, think, know, but I digress. It's been a few months since I've written for this blog. I have been active engaging my life in the sensory experiences that surprise me and take me out of the past and into the present moment where I create my life. In a summer of new experiences, voices, people, I stepped into a greater embodiment of my life. This embodiment in itself had to be experienced in the filling of days, and subsequently, years. With so much to do, and so little time, apparently there is little time to stop and be. Or is there?

As a New Yorker, okay Long Islander, I know the meaning of rush hour. I lived on Long Island for the first twelve years of my life before living in Western New York for the last twelve. People living in Western New York, where I presently reside, seems to be in a race for time as busy becomes trendy and patience becomes a homophone for peopled treated by doctors and nurses. Time seems to have become a commodity that we compete for and prioritize as a scarce resource. What was once a shoulder for a bicyclist to use on the roads have become improvised turning lanes. We schedule appointments to converse with friends on the phone instead of calling them up to see if they're available. I sometimes wonder if our time saving cell phones make us too busy to live our lives.

When I hurry, I lose track of where I'm coming from and have a hard time finding where I'm supposed to be. The desire to fill my life is still strong, but as I fill my life, I begin to see what I might be missing by always looking ahead. I notice this most often when I'm running late to a scheduled event in my life. Everyone else seems to forget that I'm running late, that I need to get where I'm going, and I need to be there now. When I take a breath, I begin to remember that my punctuality, or lack thereof, is not their responsibility. Furthermore, when I slow my thoughts down, I realize that being concerned about my lateness won't actually get me to my destination any faster. Instead, I have time to calmly assess what affect being late will have on what I will be able to do upon arrival at Point B.

Similarly, anxiety keeps me wondering about the unknown, rather than remaining alert and aware in the present. The anxiety and fear of the unknown makes it hard to be happy and let myself fully be. I want the days to be long, to be memorable, and to be fully realized so that when my year is viewed in reverse, I can see what I can reminisce on with gratitude and joy. I don't want my hurriedness to be recalled with regret. I want a memory to be one of pride and maybe even whimsy. So how do I challenge myself to live a life I will be fully satisfied by?

I have heard about doing that which I am afraid of, to recognize the deeper knowing that life's goodness rests in every act of kindness and breath of smile. In the very real snowball of anxiety, I can listen to what I fear, and listen to what I know, and step into that which is about to happen with less apprehension and more excitement. For the best is what is to be created right now for a future of remembering and continued living. It is then by realizing growth as a claim to the life I am living that I fulfill the life I dream. For life is about diving in and discovering the unknown as it runs through my fingers and soaks my shirt in the juice of living.

.
To be present is to notice what is right before me. To make some life out of a moment and realize all that is unfolding before me and in me, before you and in you. Smile.

The Continuation of The Moment

The life I live is assorted with feelings and thoughts that my brain captures from soundbites and smiles from strangers. A wave of emotion can arise from an ordinary event viewed from a perspective of pessimism or optimism. If realism were an option, perhaps I'd be guiding my life with a clearheadedness that was free from all bias. However, with human life being filled with ideas, wonderment, doubt and fear, the excitement and rush of being caught up in a story that we've held to for days or years has to me been an easy way out of charting a new course. This new course doesn't have to be a new direction. It can be the choice to continue on with a new, integrated perspective that opens the door to new experience.

Is my world more than what I see with my eyes? What about the birdsong I hear through the windows screen, the friend who offers us a tight squeeze when I've been feeling the other tight squeezes and stresses that aren't so comforting, and the whiff of a flower's aroma right as we see the colorful blossoms? Life is a multisensory kaleidoscope in a way that is miraculous as it forms out of the endings of past moments. If in a circular pattern, beginnings are like endings and endings, beginnings, where are we going? Does it matter if we're caught up with the rest of life that is on a different, but interrelated network of experiences? What do I mean by caught up anyway?

I don't have to model action for action and possession for possession those I long to be like. It doesn't have to be an experiential "keeping up with the Joneses." I can instead take pages from others' books and and frames from others' movies to help discover meaning in my own place and time. So when I have felt lost in thought about what I am not, then maybe I am also thinking about what I am, in perspective of how I view what other people seem to be. What a multi-faceted experience that is never quite comprehensible!

To seek to understand, to discover one's life and those of other's can be rich and unceasingly fascinating, but to seek to do one's best to connect with the source of one's inspirations. How could I forget the excitement of living my own life while others do the same with theirs. I live for experiences of brief connection where we are less alone and more together. I cannot try to let others live my life, but to live my life with my senses and thoughts, learnings and doings, all in the flow of the universe, the spirit, and the life that embodies what I can experience, and what I seek to experience through understanding and listening. The violets from earlier left their aroma in my life to form part of a new journey down the road. What will come of that?

Releasing Your Being

We know that pain is far from beautiful in its initial experience of heart wrenching agony. It appears as a chasm that is nowhere near complete or whole. It tears at us, and urges us to feel that if we don't identify with what happened, we may as well forget our lives altogether. Our actions become a response to the pain we feel and our own expressions of life lived are sometimes shadowed by living in our fears. This is where it becomes possible to feel our own pain return to us after being forgotten for a long time. We feel our lives change in response to what caused us pain, and that is what we identify with when wellness seems to be gone. The conflict can linger in our lives even when the pain is forgotten. This is apparent when we try to be whole and run into the wall of hurt that seemed to be gone.

Some days these feelings seem to be so present there seems no way through. Other days, a wall emerges in the midst of everyday routine that appears as the ordinary and mundane fades into reminders of feeling that hadn't occurred to us in years. As that present moment is seasoned with a taste of a feeling that we have felt before it can be recognized as those old feelings that lingered in our subconscious until we found that it was woundedness and resentment that pulled us under.

These feelings, be they disappointment, loneliness, bitterness, as any myriad complex of emotional mashups have roots in the daily life. The walls that emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, come from the build up of this pain that has been swept under the rug until it cannot be ignored any further.

We cannot always stay close to those who have hurt us when we need to be whole again. Sometimes we need to be accepting and patient with our lives as we take the steps to be where we need to be whole again.  It is easier to respond to our own hearts with an understanding of the tension and the shame that these instances cause us to feel. We can be conflicted in ways we didn't even know we could, and when we see our humanity, we see that feeling whole includes our being ourselves in the broken places of our lives.

Being face to face with the experience of our hurt places is a frightening idea. It brings us to a place of unease, until there is a recognition of who that person with experiences of pain and wellness together is. As pain is understood, by feeling the impact of it in our lives and those around us, we find it no longer overpowering us. It gives us a connection to our lives and our true nature as we use what makes us alive to bring ourselves back to living.

Step by Step

I have a hard time looking for the answers to questions of life that I'd rather live and discover answers to than have it all figured out. That doesn't keep me from asking the questions that come back even when I thought I had the answer. The practice of being incorporates all that changes and develops across a lifetime. It is here that brings presence to a stillness while change constantly brings me to surprises that delight and surprises that make me concerned. The long term view that opens my eyes to the past and opens my soul to the future give me a chance to explore what this present can be.

Sharing this life, one that is a dance with the changing seasons and folk of all kind brings me to realize how much stay the same over the years. It is this sameness that brings out the goodness that is still full and rich in the midst of rain clouds and stormy tumult. To offer or receive a hand in the midst of uncertainty is to walk the world in greater harmony. When realizing our wealth of experiences are worlds to bring together, we find that even our differences are what we have in common.

For me, friendship has been a source of connection as well as collaboration. It can form a bridge that connects two souls or it can bring together ways of living that enhance the art of each person's experience. For friends to grow close, there often has to be an experience that each person recognized as a place where deepening and opening could occur. It is the opening of life that is like a new day, a flower unfolding its petals, a collaboration in creating a sports victory or a song, that embraces the other, that takes life in its grasp and lets go so that it can hold another hand, touch another soul, and sing a song for the times of sharing. The path of a friendship is the chance to be one's self and become one with their life as they live and laugh in the way of love for another.

Sunshine

The sun shines all over this planet leaving energy for plants to grow and light to illuminate our lives. For an emergence of sunshine is a creative force, cast on the snow and reflected in a glistening light and as rays like fingers reach through the clouds to the terrain of the Earth. It finds its opening in the crags and fissures along the surface of life as a guiding beacon into understanding warmth.

Our eyes open to the first light and close when our body calls upon us for a time of rest and renewal. As the sunshine bursts across the scenes of our lives there is the space to discover what is here in our lives, what is deepened and expanded in every moment. In recent days, I have felt the sunshine of new opportunities in the lives of friends who have danced into the dawn. I feel the gaiety of all we gather in the stories of our days. The stories that begin to glow with the happiness that surprises us as sunshine glows from the places that were once dark.

This is the sharing of sunshine. A dance with a dear friend, a smile with a new one, an understanding nod in an empathetic ear. As we illuminate life with the truth of who we are, we can bear the anxieties and fears that carry our hearts into realms of deepest need. As we hear how we're not alone, as we gather ourselves to trust life at its core, we can begin to soar together.

           

Reaching For Freedom

In the depth of our hearts there lies a place where we can live and find the freedom in that fullest space. It is a space of liberating expressiveness that brings out the fears and questions that plague one's mind with doubt. As a way to take flight, there must be the willingness to abandon that which others expect us to be and do. To live from our lives, we stand up in our experience and step into that place of unrelenting opportunity.

These places allow an intimate connection with life in the most powerful of ways. We evoke the essence of our beings as we honor our own paths with honesty and are changed when we experience the intersection of these places of love, discovery, understanding, openness, and transformation. The challenge within comes from wrestling with the forces that try to make our dynamic lives for us. No one can tell us what to experience when we love. We can only change when we are ready.

So as we venture into life, we find these experiences that free our inhibitions and allow for something almost divine to emerge. What does it take to fully liberate a soul for a moment alone if not a life time as well? To be free from the chains of life? When these freedoms are kept in bondage by discrimination, oppression, trauma, misunderstanding, and fear, a full life cannot be lived. Perhaps a lifetime of moments of walking through the gentle moments of sunshine and bitter winds, amidst the shade of a tree that grew alongside the roads that brought us new and old memories together, and among the breaths that we felt our freedom as a means to overcome our collective fears and struggles.

To be free, we have to reach into ourselves and extend into the heights of our dreams and goals, affirm the shadows standing beside us and grow tall together. To be free, we still will live with consequences and the experience of pain, but it is different when the pain is understood as it is overcome with love and compassion, each day, each life at a time.

Barefoot Friendships

There's nothing like being barefoot in a friendship. While barefooted, or fully present in the moment you're with a friend, your spirit can connect to the depths of the channels you both have experienced in a rush of storytelling and understanding. It can be like experiencing two lives simultaneously while the empathy of your experience brings you closer together.

Friendship, to me, is a story of life forming from its rawest elements: emotion, humor, questions, hopes, wonders, fears, loves. It changes our outlook on life and enriches it with an understanding that nothing is perfect in an idyllic way. It has to be perfect in our own way, that is to say it has the potential to be perfect in the path of understanding a coming together after communicating the centers of our lives, no matter what place they are in.

As in a spirit of camaraderie, therein lies the knowing of not knowing. Life has a way of surprising us, moving us into scary places where our hearts are tense with feeling and rent with disappointment. Together in friendship, our lives form where emptiness tries to pull us apart. Solitude brings us new perspective. Maybe there will be a way through this misunderstanding that allowed me to accept the complex truth of mutual realities. Maybe I can laugh and know the intimate places of my soul because a friend brought me there and loved me there.

To trust is to nurture the freedom of communicated experience with each other. Then we can be barefoot, present, and alive. Alive to really uncover what we knew we could be had we only released the moment we thought we knew how it would all work out.

About Fear

Today is the first day of the first full week of the new year according to the Gregorian calendar that is commonly used personally and professionally in my life. As a new year in 2014 has taken hold, so to has old habits that return showing that a new year doesn't keep life continuous in the patterns that have begun in moments passed. The new year had me thinking about fear, the emotion that makes it hard to accept any part of reality. With so many perspectives and biases, wounds and scars, histories, and other experiences woven into our interactions and our experiences, fear is easy to feel. 

The questions I asked myself what it would take to live my life fully, especially if I wanted it to be unique. I kept coming back to fear. It has been a persistent feeling that I've noticed to be quite a contagion no matter the severity of the circumstance. Fear of failure, inadequacy, the end of the world, open spaces, death, rejection, being loved, elevators, heights, snakes, the dark. I could go on with my list and risk sounding like I want to start one of those psychiatrist booths that Lucy van Pelt is always using to get Charlie Brown out of a nickel, but that's not what this is about. There is something about fear that provokes people to do things they wouldn't otherwise dream of doing. I don't think there is a way to keep fear out of our lives, but I do believe there are ways to be aware of it so it doesn't influence us in ways that risk us from living life fully. 

While I cannot speak for anyone's experiences but my own on this blog, I will share that thinking about the future with some consternation and apprehension can make the present moment more tense and less freeing. I prefer to be a bit of a free spirit with some conscious thought included in what I do, think, and say in order to gain different perspectives on what parts of life I may be thinking about.  If I read something in the news that had a decidedly grim outlook and I thought there may be hope, I would probably choose the side of hope. Now hope may feel a bit naive, and maybe it is premature to think that way without knowing all sides to a certain situation, but if I were to to take the time to do that, I would find so many different thoughts and experiences that both validate and negate my own that it would be hard to really know what to think after that. 

So I have taken some time to rest with uncertainty, to accept the paradoxes of life and death as part of this universe, this life, this world that I've been traveling along for 24 years. I can be afraid or I can let life be a wonder of delight and surprise that can both be superficial and of depth to making meaning, purpose, and goodness from the acts of kindness and laughter that appear in the midst of coping with the hardscrabble realities that pockmark our lives and help us direct our conscious efforts. To live without fear is to not be afraid, but to live without fear controlling our entire lives.  Happy New Year!