I know this much is true flowers
So many thoughts lately. I want to share all of them and I want to share none of them.
While I’m waiting to see where those balls land, a story for you. One that is deeply simple and simply deep, like all the best stories are.
You may or may not know that I've been doin’ my fair share o' soul-searching lately. Asking the deep questions, breathing the deep breaths.
When I last wrote, I was about to embark on a two week adventure in the woods wherein I, much like the Indigo Girls, went to see the doctor of philosophy. “I went to do the doctor, I went to the mountains. I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains…”
I lost myself and I found myself. Found more of me than I left with—the good parts that I had forgotten existed—the parts of me I most treasure.
I've since misplaced those parts again.
But I know they're not far from me now. I just had them. They'll turn up any day now.
More adventures have ensued.
I’m leaving no stone unturned, no demon unseen.
In some quiet moments amongst the chaos, I see that my teacher is right: joy really does follow peace.
And peace is everywhere.
I feel that, and I remember it.
My peace.
Our peace.
The Peace.
Other moments suck the wind from my lungs as if I have croup. I grab my seat--white knuckles squeezing for anything that will keep me here--I grab at my seat for dear life.
Awakening’s a bitch, I tell you.
My ego is not going down without one hell of a battle.
Luckily, neither is my heart.
Last Saturday I was on a hike with our five-year-old son and I was chewing on some deep thoughts about worthiness and worthlessness, self-love and self-loathing, when I remembered that kids are the very best teachers. They probably know innately the keys to self-love and self-worth, I'm guessing.
So I asked him, “[Son] - what do you love about you?”
Without skipping a beat, because kids are wicked sharp like that, he said, “What I love about me is that when I ride my bike, I feel the wind in my face.”
Stay there. That sentence brought you to your knees, yes? Stay on your knees and chew on that.
Let it settle in.
“What I love about me is that when I ride my bike, I feel the wind in my face.”
I may still be struggling to put into words and into consciousness the truths that I have always known in my heart. I may have travelled thousands of miles seeking answers when really the only distance I need to traverse is the vast and nonexistent space between my head and my heart.
But I do know that this much is true:
The answers we seek: we will find them by feeling the wind upon our cheeks.
More love than our tiny minds could ever possibly quantify is as real, as close, and as accessible as the breeze upon our faces.
Also I know this:
The fact that I, too, pause on occasion to feel that breeze tickling my nose...despite all the noise and all the shadows and all the "shoulds" and all the screens vying for my attention...
I love that about me.
That's really something.
That, maybe, is everything.