Monday, February 16, 2009

stories

Mount Ras Dashen, Ethiopia, March 2007
Okay, this is a pretty public place to talk about this, but I like to work under the illusion that the people who want to read my blog are truly interested in who I am as a person, and that our human experiences shared, connect us to the whole in some mystical way.

Like many families, I suspect, mine is troubled. I won't go into all that. I've done that enough already. I don't want to tell a big old dramatic story or to blow my own horn here. However, I do want to share with you the happy place in which I find myself, the realization I had today regarding how far I've come.

It occurred today when somebody told me my ex-husband got married last year to the woman he's been living with ever since he and I split up. The person who told me, loves me and knows me well enough to understand some of the journey that I've been on all these years. And she knows me well enough to understand that I don't need to be "protected" from the truth.

Now, in this snapshot moment of where I am, you understand, I have no idea at all of the kind of person my ex husband has become. I only know what I was back then and I am happy with who I am now. The idea of any nostalgia for the past or what I was is so limiting that even holding a thought of it in my mind for the most brief moment imaginable, has me feeling stiffled and constrained. The idea that now, I would be upset or hurt by hearing my ex husband has married again merely has me smiling, amused. Those that kept that knowledge from me severely underestimate who I am, what I have gone through and the strength I now possess. And I realize they may be telling themselves a story of what happened that is totally different from what I think my story is.

To me that is amusing. Oh, to be sure, I'm still very idealistic and naive, ever hopeful about the people I meet, willing to see a best in them that even they themselves have given up on long ago. Ah well. Many people even think that I was too blind for my own good then and suggest that I should have sought revenge more effectively. I decided long ago however that that would be energy wasted and focused in the wrong place. And after all these years, I think even though unaware as I was, I am glad I made the decision to stop resisting what was happening and let it all go.
And best of all, I realize that all the things that troubled me, the struggles that have come and gone, most of them were and continue to be of my own making, as my mind and ego try to control, organize life to keep me safe and resist or avoid things that are unpleasant. I realize, that what is essentially me is not troubled by the sad and unhappy things that have happened to me or might yet happen to me. Just like the blue sky is not altered by the storms that pass through, what I am, essentially what is me, is not all those things, the story of what has happened to me. I am like the blue sky and gratefully, joyfully, I realize how wonderfully free I am!

Now, I feel like all of life is open to me, a great adventure and I have so many adventures to choose from, so much living to do!

Labels:

Friday, February 06, 2009

promises

Isn't it odd how trees form their buds in the fall after the leaves have fallen and the buds stay on the trees right through the bitterest winter months before they open in the spring?

They don't look like much, and many people don't even notice they're there until spring arrives. Then, perhaps because they are expecting to see signs of spring, they happen to look up and voilà, suddenly, it's spring! And as evidence, people point to the buds on the trees! They don't seem to realize, that on many trees such as my maple here, the buds have been there since the autumn!

What does all this mean? I think it's rather lovely that when things seem to have died and the darkness of winter descends upon us, already the promise of spring is there. It's on every branch, the promise in myriads of tiny buds, just waiting for the light to change, the warmth to return and those tiny buds will swell out into flowers and leaves!

Sometimes when I seem to be in a terribly grim season, my mood dark and feeling like the world is an awfully cold place, looking out my window to see those wee small buds, all over the branches of my maple, I remember to hold on. My spirit may be cramped into some tiny space inside me, but I know if I wait, the light will change, the earth will warm up and soon, I'll feel the creative juices arise and I will be able to grow and open out.

Labels: , , , ,