Oh dear. The journey of 1,000 words begins with a single sentence. And so as I find myself staring at the screen and the blinking cursor of death I stutter my way through halting words trying to jump start my energy to have another go at my nightly endeavor: the gratitude blog.
I am grateful this evening for the will to keep moving. It has stood me in good stead for many years, particularly of late. There have been times when I simply did not want to take another step, to struggle through another day, to even get out of bed in the morning. But I did, every time, every day, no matter what. I actually amazed myself at times. I can remember being bone weary, packing up boxes and hauling them to my storage unit as I prepared to make a move before I even knew where I was going. I had just about run out of options and knew I was going to have to move but had no idea where. No matter how tired I got, I had to keep moving. No one was going to come in and do it for me. So I kept on pushing, kept working, kept fighting. I could not, would not, did not quit.
Lately I have been thinking about ease, about the cessation of struggle and embracing what’s easy. I wrote in my journal the other morning, “I’m feeling some struggle and I want to–as odd as it sounds–really work to have things be easy.” I decided to ask myself in any given situation, “How can I have this be easy?” I want to pay attention to the tensions I feel when I am struggling with something, when I feel like I’m swimming against the current. I want to stop and observe the struggling and see what it’s about. And if I can identify the struggle then perhaps I can begin to effect a strategy that involves letting go, relaxing, and allowing something to happen naturally rather than to force it to happen unnaturally. I’m not quite sure how this will work or what it looks like, but I’m committed to trying it to see how it goes.
More and more I am learning to put things into perspective and pay attention to whatever is going on around me. I want to be in the flow of life, be carried along by it, rather than constantly swimming upstream. There’s a certain wisdom to be gained through and in the midst of struggle, but it’s meant to be a journey and not a destination. I’ve spent a little too much time in the land of struggle lately, I’ve observed it’s landscapes, mapped its terrain. I’m ready to float on over into the land of ease, maybe lay on the beach over there, relax and unwind. I can feel that I have gotten really tired and need some rejuvenation soon–some rest and quiet. We’ll see how that goes.
Sometimes life happens too fast to process. I am looking to slow things down and allow them to be easy. Some of this is about exercising my will: the same element that allowed me to doggedly put one foot in front of the other when I wanted to lay down and quit is exactly what I need to employ to move myself into ease. That is a goal to aspire to, one for which I am willing to expend some effort–exercising the muscle of letting go. What a wonderful, paradoxical world. I am grateful for the paradox and for the challenge. I’ll look forward to reporting in about what I am discovering about ease. In the meantime, I’m going to practice letting go.
