Pear trees are in bloom up and down the downtown street where I work. Up and down the street where I live, too. All fat and raspberry pink or white. Crocuses, too, pushing up their eager heads, looking up to taller Daffodils. And gorgeous yellow Forsythia wrapping up and around lines of fence.
The first fortune cookie fortune I got after my separation said:
When flowers bloom so will great joy in your life.
I think about that every spring. I think it's part of the reason I adore this fleeting time of year so much. Days of warm, clear sun all the more appreciated squished between days of chilly wind and cloudy skies.
Just when we think we can't tolerate another day of winter, BAM! Spring shows up, bit by bit until it gives way to summer. Then summer to fall, fall to winter, and repeat. Cyclical.
Isn't it nice to trust that? Not just in seasons, but in life, too?
Once I learned that just because things change doesn't mean they're gone forever, my outlook on life softened. Just because I have a bad day or stretch of bad days--or even several bad months--where I feel stagnant or lazy or grumpy, doesn't mean that's the way it's always going to be. I trust me. I trust life. I trust happiness and accomplishment and generous blessings will make their way back again eventually, if I let them.
With that attitude, I realized I could take bigger risks and not be afraid. Anything lost in the attempt could be earned back, or would come back naturally on its own. If I gain a few (seven) pounds because I can't keep away from Smash Burger sweet potato fries and chili-spiced pistachio dark chocolate from the specialty candy shop around the corner...well, I trust warmer weather and forced yard work and chosen longboarding and hiking will whittle it away again. If I have a month I don't feel like writing, but instead fall into a Netflix/Words with Friends black hole, I trust I'll get bored soon enough and go back to the stories and poems calling me in my head.
As long as you have a fixed idea of who you want to be and what you want to accomplish, and are moving in that direction, I don't see anything being so powerful as to keep you getting there...eventually.
*For now, I'm choosing to kind of hermit myself from my normal social butterfly-ness. *I'm choosing to read more instead of write. *I'm neglecting some housework in favor of fiddling with my Instagram app. *I'm feeling a little lonely, isolated, un-understood...but I trust the cycle will set me back again into a place of companionship and connectedness soon enough.
After all, the flowers are blooming, so great joy in my life should be too. If the fortune cookie people know what they're talking about, that is :)
So next time you feel like everything or everyone or every ambition has deserted you, that you're not the person you once were, think of the cycle--think of when you've felt like this before, and how it went away and came back again and went away. Then trust that. And let things be.
1 comment:
I just got asked to give a talk on "hope". One of the thoughts that is floating around in my brain is the weird phenomenon of forgetfulness that often occurs when we feel any variation of the opposite of hope. Why is it hard to remember what hope feels like? It sort of makes me think if when I had to have my stomach scoped to try to find the cause of my pain. I was told I would be given a medicine that would make me forget. Which meant there was something to forget. Weird. I was going to have a lot of discomfort but I wouldn't remember. The idea of that strangely makes me think of what the adversary attempts to do to us. He makes us forget hope. Well he tries. Sometimes succeeding. It's up to us to remember.
I'm typing this in my phone and I hope it makes sense. The flowers are in bloom and so must hope be.
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