I have a sharp tendency to run away.
Even as I sit writing here, my mind's a-racing in a million different directions. Where could I be? What could I build of my life next year? Which road should I take? I'm tempted to ditch the cold of winter for sunny shores, and can't help but wonder whether I'm ditching more than meets me at the surface.
I don't like the cold. But is it right to run away from it?
On my mat this morning, I took an equinox practice oriented at change. At the turning of leaves. Made me wonder if my desperation not to see leaves changing and temperatures drop reverberates internally. How can I be scared of change when I'm addicted to it? Desire it. Invite it into my life ritualistically, I do.
There's a dilemma in my relationship with change. With the turning of leaves and the sweaters that wrap themselves around my shoulders unannounced (and unbidden). The dilemma is... I didn't beckon you, nor am I allowed to direct you.
When I invite change in my life by plane or by heart, the changes are mine. I am the empress of my own chaos. Not so when I am forced to sit in the cold of winter that settles around me regardless. I have no power over the changing color of leaves. No strength in my bones to stop the sudden wind-shiver down my bare spine.
I am powerless before change, but powerlessness need not mean weak.
When I have no power, I can either feel small and frail or vulnerable. Frail, as I once wrote here, is the easy ability to break. Vulnerable means openness (though not the explicit invitation of breaking).
When change is inevitable, I can choose to either become weak or surrender. I hold no sway over the turning seasons, and the more I hold on to my imagined sense of control, the colder the winds will blow around me.
I have no control. Not as long as I keep struggling to stay in control. So I force my grip to relax. My eyes to close. My skin to shudder, pores crinkled in the early morning. Open, but unbroken. There's a difference.
Transformation is afoot. On all levels. In my pages of words. Between my lips and under my pillow. I am changing with the seasons. I am turning shade and shedding my skin. The only thing that saves me is, when looking in the mirror, I remind myself the firey auburn was always there. It's just a process of time and photosynthesis that reveals it now. These were always my colors.
I am still me when I fall from branch.
There's a certain comfort to that thought. It's the instinctual knowing that in my tree or on the ground, under-blanket at home or on sunny shore, the transformation resides within.
The potential for rebirth is sewn to my soul, not my coat.
And so, I need not sit in the cold to change with it. After all, my sitting in the cold doesn't equate transformation. I have enough blankets to keep me unchanged till spring. So I work. I travail to form inside myself a safe harbor to sail from. I need to carry my changing weather with me, not on me. And I can carry it anywhere.
My harbor doesn't need much. Sturdy oak panels will do wet feet just fine.
My harbor remains transient as long as my eyes remain open. As long as I continue to feel my wet cheeks and not drown in my tears. Harbor-docked, I redefine my relationship with water.
For me, true minimalism is bred in the soul. Where I am now, I am decluttering the path between my heart and my ears. Between the me who cried this morning on my mat and the me who steers. You don't need armor or Rolex to sail through change. Only to remember that underneath all this sea, there is still earth.
