Yes, that's an apt description.

 I Will Not Die an Unlived Life
by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.


"I am groping to understand what it might mean to truly love my life, to find out who I am beyond the economic necessities of being a mind-for-hire.  I want to stop running from my own tiredness, from the fear that if I am not accomplishing something, I will disappear." ~Dawna Markova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life:  Reclaiming Purpose and Passion 

Yup.  I'm right there with you, Dawna.

Self-Inflicted

Some rights reserved by BenSpark

Thorn's post from Wednesday is very timely for me. It has me thinking, not only about how I spend my days and my time, but also about how I talk to myself about it.  She writes,

"Without a sense of compassion, it is much more difficult to risk the mistakes that are necessary to our learning process...We have to come to comprehend that we may cause those around us to experience fear, or even pain. There is a cost to this desiring, but the cost for not pursuing our desires is even greater...Who are you to not step toward your destiny? Who are you to hide from the world?"

I've been noticing that I'm not giving enough time to myself. This noticing is not a calm, "Oh...huh!" kind of noticing; rather, it's a violent, "I hate that I'm always doing things I have to do!!!" and a "How lazy that you don't get up an hour earlier to write!", a noticing that feels like a knife-wielding temper tantrum. I fuss and then berate myself, not only for not taking care of my needs, but for fussing. Dare I say it? I'm violent toward myself. I don't extend compassion toward myself.

I can definitely see how this makes it next to impossible to create, to desire, to manifest authentically. I can see how it is way too risky to just let it flow because, well, later I'm likely to come crashing into my head-space, stomping and wildly thrashing, beating myself up.

Just noticing this, in this moment, is freeing up some of this energy. I can allow it to be real and imperfect and manifested- that is an option. Getting hurt in the process is possible, but it doesn't have to be self-flogging.

Huh.

Cold and Silence in the Early Dark

Some rights reserved by Leah Makin Photography

Today, in church, we talked of transience. After, during silent meditation, a vision: I was sitting, covered in crows, self as a bare-branched tree...until they all flew away, and I was both gone and free.

Gone and free. Just like that, the past is cast off, leaves in a strong wind.

Something is shifting and changing. I can feel a bit of me cracking, allowing room for expansion. The world is returning to the core, and as I follow suit, I find my core to have expanded in unimaginable ways.

More ready than ever to risk with the promise of transience, I can't hold onto...what? What I've loved? What I've despised? What I cherish and recoil from? I can't even hold onto myself, it seems. Best to just acknowledge and let it fall, loving each piece as it flies off to a more suitable environment.

Tonight, walking to work, I stopped to look at the dwindling light. Daylight savings is over, and another sort of savings begins...the saving of words, of heat. The keeping of silence and breath. In the expanding dark, a breath is a sigh of relief.

Some moments are best understood without words, though we do our best to describe them.