While the days march by in a line across our calendar, they are actually cycling through the seasons.
The unseen wheel is always turning while we grind away on the day to day.
This is so easy to forget.
And such a relief to remember.
Reality Bites
I got home last night after visiting a friend for a long weekend.
I had already done my usual Sunday chores and then some, including stopping at my post office box, before I left so the reentry was quite smooth with few steps.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, then unpacked, heated up some dinner and opened up the pile of mail.
At the bottom of the stack was a reality check.
I wish that meant it was a check with earnings for recent time spent living in the present, going with the flow, seeing things as they truly are, instead of how I want them to be.
Nope. It was the opposite.
It was one of my business credit card statements.
The long list of purchases had been necessary investments over the last year of getting my new business off the ground. Or seemed necessary in order to manifest the business.
Perhaps that was just the way I wanted things to be because I believe so much in it?
This was not actually the reality check.
It was the total amount of the credit card statement.
Reality Check
Given the pangs in my gut each time I used the card recently, I knew it was getting up there.
Expenses out without much income in is discouraging. And when you’re starting something new discouragement doesn’t help. At all.
And so, I had been focused on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time without getting bogged down in the details.
What I hadn’t been paying attention to was how up there.
And it had crossed my imaginary tipping point of what seemed safe and doable. Now, it was at the level that seemed risky and scary.
That made my whole gut clench like a fist and yet also hollow out. Like a black hole imploding into itself.
I could instantly feel the hole, perhaps a hole that had been slowly growing over the last year, but that denial had been filling?
I did not feel whole.
Like gusts of cold breeze through an open window, many emotions passed through me as I sank down into my 45-year-old armchair.
- Hurt by this consequence of past decisions that seemed right at the time,
- Mourning for past successes not just breaking even, but saving ahead,
- Anger at well-intentioned but broken systems,
- Overwhelmed by the task of repairing the imbalance,
- Scared by the possibility of not closing the hole.
And yet, I knew there was nothing I could do in that moment.
I could eat my dinner and watch a DVD from the library. And make some tea.
When the electric kettle whistled, I went over to the window sill where it’s plugged in. Something outside caught my eye. Something white.
With freezing temperatures across the state, I had driven home that day in rain, sleet and snow. But, arriving home the streets were bare.
Several hours later, in the dark as I was watching a movie and sitting with my feelings and this reality check, snow had quietly begun falling outside.
I looked closer, surprised.
Yes, the yard was in fact dusted with the powdered sugar snow.
Just as the credit card statement had snapped me into the moment, the snow snapped me into the bigger picture.
Reality Check
Of the seasons, the unseen wheel constantly turning. Always in motion.
Of which, gives us our days, weeks, months.
Of a system constantly harmonizing to realign with what’s showing up.
Of which, I am a small part.
And in which I am whole.
And when I consider the whole — of my life, of the natural world, of a mysterious force — I can once again find trust.
That things will work out, somehow.
And perspective. That things work themselves out over time and space, sometimes lots.
And peace.
And so, I find my way back to the natural rhythm as I continue to focus on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time.
Without getting bogged down as I grind away on the day-to-day.