Our Only Significant Activity

Worry has a sly way of sneaking up on you, doesn’t it?  It is ever present, a quiet steady drone, drip drip dripping in the space between migrant thoughts, picking up speed and sound with time and attention until we are drenched, soaked and heavy hearted, a fury of mind chatter and restlessness. 

Mark Nepo says “there is no end to worry, because there is no end to what is out of our view, beyond our very small eyes.”  Worry is a way to gamble with what might or might not happen.  Why is it that we so often put our money on flawed possibilities, on what could go wrong?  I think we are drawn to the dark.  We are drawn to the shadows that are the yin to the yang of this universe.  There is something comfortable and familiar and safe and oddly magnetic in shrinking back from the light.  It’s easy.  Instead of bearing our naked soul and casting our heart-rays into the sky, we stand still and weave sticky webs of worry around our spirit. 

I’m beginning to think that our only significant activity is to love.  Everything else is irrelevant.  All of the worry and all of the fear and all of the doubt and everything’s that wrong with this life and in this world, don't let it swallow you.  Love it.  Love everything.  Just love it.  Love it with all that you are.  Fill it with so much love and light that you squeeze out the angst and the fear and you break free from the web of worry and you rise above the shadows to which you are drawn.  

Love everything you know and everything you don’t.  Love it all to god damn pieces.  Love yourself and your friends and your husband and your dog and your house.  Love the hour long commute and the traffic and the man you see holding a cardboard sign on the side of the road.  Love the color blue, the cellulite on your thighs, the way the sky glows before the sun wakes in the morning, a grain of sand, post-its.  Love the chaos and the confusion and the not-knowing.  Love this unending journey for all that it is, because guess what, it's all we've got.   

Eat, drink, think, breathe and be the love that you are.  Feel satisfied.  Don’t let the residue of worry and the anticipation of what might go wrong encumber your spirit.  Instead, close your eyes to it and hold one anothers hands tight and live straight from your heart.  Keep it clear and open and plow ahead, loving everything in your way. 

Bring It On

Another new year.  A shiny new year, bow on top, filled with all of the impending unknowns and eager anticipation that the last held.  The promise of rebirth and renewal gleams, the promise of a clean palate and unsullied stretches of days ahead and the official closing of another chapter.  It’s all very ceremonial.  We put on our party hats, bid adieu to the mishaps and setbacks and disappointments of yesteryear, and turn our faces and hearts toward the seedlings of opportunity waiting to sprout from the 365 days ahead.   

As we grow, so do our resolutions.  Our aspirations and desires and hopes and intentions evolve and carry the weight of our years and the grit of responsibility.  The topography of our lives is ever-changing.  It gets more complicated and more messy and more difficult.  And as I stand now at the foot of 2011, another year passed, another year to come, I see how all of the planning and hoping and mind jabbering is so much smaller than what we choose to do with the changing topography of our lives.  What we choose to do when our dreams change shape and our aspirations fall short and the seedlings of opportunity we have planted stay underground.  And whether we are able to open our eyes and our hearts to the gifts that are born from the turbulence that pains us.

Life does not go as planned.  Thank God.  I would have missed out on so much if it did.  We mustn't forget how small we are.  We are children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars.  We must love every minute.  We must try.  Even when life doesn't go according to plans.  We must keep our eyes and our hearts and our arms wide open to welcome the quiet gifts that hide beneath our unanswered prayers and unfulfilled resolutions. 

This year I will continue to dream.  I will dream big.  I will bask in the promise of rebirth and renewal as I welcome a shiny new chapter.  And I will never lose hope.  Not ever.  Not if my seedlings don't sprout.  Not if I stumble.  Not if I fail.  I will remember that even when it feels like I'm sinking, I will survive.  I will remember that like the trees, my roots are deep and strong.  I will remember that like the stars, my light shines forever.    

2011, I am ready.  Bring it on.