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You are not alone.
There are others out there. The ones born at the wrong end. Some call them old souls, lovers of death, struggling for words to describe what can only be experienced.
Mystery feels safe. Paradox is home. Loneliness, a comfortable companion. One foot in this world and the other somewhere unknown, the unfathomable realm.
Most people seem to wade through everyday, small talk slipping easily off the tongue.
But not for us, we stare through, wanting to hide, squirming, awkward, uninterested.
On this Vernal Equinox, social media flooded with colorful buds and ballads.
I wonder if you, too, cannot stop thinking about death?
I walk down sidewalks glimmered with bright pinks, purples, and dazzling whites. Strangers next to me, shedding layers, the hope of freedom, contagious.
Cartwheels, over the tenderness of fresh grass, under bare feet again.
It is all so painstakingly beautiful, and yet I am reminded of Fall.
My favorite season.
When the air smells of burning wood.
The leaves lined up for their standing ovation. Each bold color, brave enough to bow, center stage, the grand finale.
About to perform the most courageous act of nature. They let go. They fall. To the ground. All the majesty of the minute before is gone, never to be seen again.
The radiant orange, yellow, red, turns brown, crumbles under our feet. Nobody pays attention to the forgotten earth.
I love the fall, but I do not have an easy time letting go.
A part of me will white knuckle grip what is comfortable and fight like hell to ward off inevitable change.
My bones know something more breathtaking is waiting, yet my fists stay clenched in rage.
“Rage, Rage against the dying of the light…”
Control is addictive, but, how boring would it be to stay radiant red, clinging to the tree I know best, through the frozen winter?
No other colors around me. I may be the star of my own show, but still shiver all alone.
Why would I ever choose to miss the magic of being born again?
So today, on this first day of spring, I try.
Like all the seasons before me, I long to let go.
My clever ego exploding into shards, secrets of shameful edges, welcomed home again with graceful fractals of gentle light.
Extraordinarily crafted into a new mosaic of possibilities.
In perfect harmony. Safe enough for surrender. Vulnerable enough to be seen in the places I’ve desperately tried to hide.
Especially from myself.
Relationships outgrown. Habits that no longer bring joy. Beliefs stuffed into boxes, too small for who I am becoming. Who I thought I was yesterday, a memory.
As the day creeps again into the darkness of night, I know the moon is always full, even when I can’t see all of it.
I exhale my fear and trust the sun will wake me again tomorrow.
Like clockwork.
Today, we all woke up again. That is the real miracle. And the ones who didn’t, that is also a miracle. Full circle death to rebirth, rebirth to death, a timeless rhythm.
When my grandma died a few years ago, I took dead cactus pieces from her land in the hill country of Texas. I wanted them to grow where I live in the city center of Washington, D.C.
Weeks before she died, I asked her if she thought I could reroot them.
She said no.
I smile, as I look over my right shoulder, next to her picture on my desk is a thriving, blooming cactus. With new offshoots, multiplying every day, from what seemed to be “forgotten earth.”
She is right here.
We all are. Born again into this new moment with all its beauty, angst, pain, grief, joy, laugher, tears, anger, rage, shame, fear, boredom. There is enough space for it all, if we find the courage to let go again and again and again.
“But still, there is no path that goes all the way,
One conversation leads to another,
One breath to the next until
There’s no breath at all, just the inevitable final release
Of the burden.
And then,
Wouldn’t your life have to start
All over again
For you to know
Even a little of who you had been?” ~ David Whyte
~
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