With the arrival
of spring has come the urge for a little mental and emotional house cleaning.
Specifically, a review of habits, dreams and desires to see which are serving
and which are not.
It always
surprises me the extent to which I can get lost in a particular way of
functioning, forgetting to check in with myself now and again to see if the
path I’m on is taking me where I really want to go—places in closer alignment
with current values and aspirations.
For example, for
many years now I have been writing this blog with no real purpose in mind. I
started it so I would have a venue to continue practicing the craft of writing
(I love words, books, the musicality of language … all of it). What I never
expected was that my writing would resonate with so many others, that anyone
would really care about what I was saying. And so I have found myself in a
predicament.
Who am I to hold
myself up as an authority to help anyone? I don’t mean this in any
self-deprecatory way, it is just that when I write it is a free exercise in the
creative expression of things I feel challenged by in my own life—a note to
self, nothing more. I’m not an expert. I haven’t solved these common human
dilemmas. I’m still wrestling with angels.
Also, I’m as
ordinary as the day is long and have no wish to be otherwise. I have struggled
with all the fervor around the cult of celebrity, and the pressure to be a star
of some kind—note worthy, special—but I think it’s a trap. For me it takes away
from the intimacy of all that is small, ordinary and beautiful that I have come
to value in life. For as the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh points out:
“Ordinary things wear lovely
wings.”
Washing dishes,
gardening, cleaning and hanging laundry out to dry are all very ordinary
activities that hold the potential for transcendent experience if we are awake
and alive to what we are doing and how we are doing it. I don’t want to miss
any of this. For me, this is the point in being alive at all. It is how I care
for myself and convey my love for others.
So, I will
continue dear reader to write, but not with a view toward solving problems as
much as giving voice to them, exploring their particular shape, texture and colour
to see what can be evoked that may be of some use. That’s all I’ve got.
And, I believe,
that is all anyone can really lay honest claim to.
So concludes my little sprout of an offering on this fine spring day.
