I’m watching the Douglas Firs and Sacred Cedars dance and sway to the wild winds of winter and I’m thinking of you.
I hope, as life’s gusts whip and blow through you, that you too might see the beauty of this chaotic choreography, that this tempest might also shake you free of your dry leaves, leaving you naked and open and waiting for the touch of spring.
Because it’s not necessarily what happens to us that makes us who we are. It’s how we choose to move through life with the marks and scars we acquire along the way.
The last time I wrote to you, I was mulling over the notion of “why”, the why behind our actions and emotions and how important it might be for reframing and realigning with what we most desire.
Since then, I’ve chewed on, swished around, and swallowed the concept from all different angles
Today I’ve come to pick a few tiny fragments from my teeth.
I’m not going to argue with Socrates and his whole, “an unexamined life is not worth living” dictum. I believe that asking good questions and getting curious about all things is a beautiful way to live, albeit, not the only way. But I am going to say I’ve noticed it’s pretty easy to get stuck in the time loop of our own thoughts, pirouetting in place and stepping on the who, what, where, when, why and how of our own narrative.
Don’t get me wrong. Those stories are the meat and potatoes, and they are fundamental to our self-understanding, but only if we can step out of the stories and examine them from afar. Only if we are willing to look at the feeling behind, beneath and within each episode. Otherwise we are simply reinforcing the chronicles and beliefs woven within.
Because in the clumsy waltz between feelings and logic, feelings will take the lead every time.
I don’t know that trees ask why the wind blows.
And while science tells us that trees maintain a recorded history in the heart of their trunks and the seeds of their offspring, I’m pretty sure they don’t store the scripts of their stories.
But there is no doubt in my mind that they feel the wind on their leaves.
So today, I hope you feel.
Feel the chill of winter on your frost bitten cheeks.
Feel both the pain and relief that comes with release.
Feel the sadness, the anger and wound.
But most importantly, feel the incredible joy it is to be you.
Heart in my hand in yours,
