Turn, Turn, Turn

Hey.  How have you been?  I know, I know, it’s been too long, we’ve managed to let life get in the way again and let the important things slide.  We keep doing that, taking the other for granted when things become hurried and frantic and you can’t tell up from down or night from day – hell, who are we kidding, it can happen even if it’s a perfectly quiet Sunday morning on the deck listening to the birds and enjoying that first cup of coffee watching the sun wake up the sky.  We’re lazy and we know it.  The things that keep us grounded the most are the ones we allow to shift out of focus on a regular basis until such time as we stop long enough to notice what’s missing.

It’s still warm, too warm for us up here, and I know you have it worse, but we were never meant to live with the AC running 24/7 – that’s not healthy and I don’t know how you do it.  I need my window open at night to sleep in that deep, restful sleep that has been eluding me for far too long now, and a closed up stale house just isn’t cutting it.

Yes, I know we’ve only got a few more months of this and then it’s back to the dark chill, and you know I’m perfectly fine with that.  I’ve never once said I didn’t like that.  Yes I know I complain about it once it’s here and caught us in it’s icy grasp, but deep down I still love it, and would dearly miss it if this wasn’t where we called home.

There’s comfort in those changes, a rhythm, a cadence that marks time perfectly, measuring the months while we pretend not to notice, eyes diverted while the grass grows and darkens, slows and browns, cools then stops.  It’s an assurance that things are fine the way they are, without your intervention, that nature has it all figured out and if you’d only quit trying to fool yourself, you’d see you need only to fall into step and allow it to be just the way it is.

But we’ve never really been good at that have we?

We’re fortunate to live in a time where (for most of us) opportunity and choice are almost endless, we’re god-like in every respect and ancient royalty by any measure of historical context, but we’re caught in a shift of ideology that has us anxious and fearful of losing everything we have.  Sounds like the same issues historical royalty faced too, but ours is ingrained into our being now even the poorest among us expect things to be a certain way, the threshold higher than at any time before, the dream just beyond our grasp. 

Few though recognize the reality, which is not new, only magnified by the unlimited amount of information we have at our disposal through which to shift to find it.  It was easier to remain ignorant when information was more tightly controlled by the ruling classes of Church and State, easier too to be led and controlled, and don’t think that lesson has been lost on those who seek to gain at the expense of others.  Dumb it down and keep them numb and the world is your oyster.

We have only ourselves to blame – seeking refuge from our daily stresses in mindless fluff and pointless pastimes, allowing others to carry the load and do the heavy lifting, preferring to sit and rest a spell, thinking we’ll catch up and help out when we’re ready.  But if we can’t even make time for the ones closest to us, the ones who mean the most, what makes us think we’ll make any time for issues that might not concern us presently but will surely impact us later?  We’ve been conditioned to live in the here and now, and that’s exactly where we’ll be damned.

But how do you balance the here and now acceptance of allowing things to be the way they are naturally with attempting to provide guidance and leadership for a future course through unknown waters?  The two seem directly opposed. Perhaps within each is the solution to the other – a measured allowance of latitude within the wheel to wander across the waves while we occasionally scan the horizon for perils and obstacles?  Except that it was far easier to spot the hazards when you were alone at sea as opposed to traversing the woodlands at high speed where both the forest and trees look identical.

Perhaps that’s where the change of season comes in, clearing the forest of the leafy cover come fall, allowing more light to filter through until we’re uncovered and bare, able to see great distances now in the cooler air, poised to take advantage of the clarity.  And with calculated decisions made, we continue on back into spring, where the green returns and multiplies soon to provide us with much needed shade to hide us from the midsummer’s sun.  We slow our pace somewhat in the heat but soldier on, the rich bounty of the coming harvest steering us forward, waiting to replenish our bodies and souls.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose…

Words to ponder this morning before that dark, oppressive heat settles in for another day.  And maybe our routine of finding and losing each other again is just the way it is meant to be. 

Maybe, but I’d prefer to keep the losing part to a minimum.

Disillusioned Acorns

It’s July, it’s hot out there, has been for some time now – not as hot of course as a little further south of us – but hot nonetheless, and throw in that humidity and I don’t care where you are from, it’s not pleasant out there.  It’s sticky and muggy and then the sun rises higher in the sky and we bake, and scorch and we take it personally. 

We’re fortunate – we have air conditioning – I feel for those who do not, or the elderly or shut-ins who have no real means to escape from the heat, and I feel for the pets that seek shade and water and a cool place to lie down and hide from the daytime.  It’s funny; we long for summer during those cold, dark days in winter when we’d give almost everything to wear shorts outside – but now that it’s here we’re struggling to keep a stiff lip and say nothing, content to enjoy this hell we’ve longed for, despite the sweat and sun-stroke and the stale conditioned air.

Its July and that means I’m bach-ing it.  The family off back home helping with the annual garage sale and the gardening and maintenance around the house that is becoming more and more work for an ever aging parent – a reality that in and of itself is causing some conflict and stress between mother and daughter, and when you add a grandson who is practically grown even though his birth certificate says he’s only 13, and a grandmother who thinks he should be entitled to laze around and enjoy his summer vacation while his mother feels she is the one expected to do most of the heavy lifting… well, you can see I’m quite happy to be home alone.

And I would normally say I am, happy to be here that is, except I’m not.  I’m lost if truth be told, and I think I have been for some time.  I have no drive, no motivation, and projects started earlier that once held my attention and desire to complete with care and concern just sit there and wait.  Wait for me to return.  But I didn’t know I had left.  No, that’s not true, I knew I was slowly leaving and I blame the meds we’ve be using to try and stop or lessen the migraines, the ones that seemed to be helping until they weren’t any longer, at which point we upped the dose to try and slow the 2 or 3 episodes a week over 3 weeks to something more human.  But that just served to catapult me into some upper level of lethargy from which I have yet to return.

Blame is an easy game.  It takes the onus off you and shifts it to whatever is handy and able to be pointed at with conviction and purpose.  All the better if that thing is unable to defend itself or point back at you – if it can’t protest, it must be guilty.  But the truth is that blame is just an excuse.  Blame has a negative connotation, where a sense of moral judgment is attached, and accepting blame seems to also warrant some degree of shame or guilt, and thus blame serves to devalue the person or persons responsible for whatever wrong has been attributed to them.  Since the meds can’t feel shame or devaluation, they are a pretty easy target at which for me to point and shoot.

But I know better.  The meds have certainly exposed the conditions to a greater degree than before, but they are not the sole cause for my malaise.  The fact is I’m tired.  And some days I feel more tired than others, and even on my best days this last while it seems I’m still a pretty good amount of tired.

Tired of what you ask?  Everything.  And nothing.  Doesn’t matter which, some days they are the same.  Or so it seems.  I’m just tired of the daily routines and pressures that go along with them and tired of the seemingly lack of progress in so many areas and directions around me at the same time.  Maybe I’m getting older and taking stock more honestly about what I see.  Maybe I’m realizing things aren’t what I thought they would be, certain they should be, believed they had to be – than what they are.

It’s an overwhelming sense of inner conflict that I can’t subdue.  I know I can be and do more than I am, give and contribute more meaningfully in many areas and ways, and yet I feel stuck; frozen; stationary when I feel like I should be moving, in any direction. Like I’m no longer a human ‘be’ing and just a human have-ing and do-ing.

In some ways I think I’ve forgotten what my true human nature is, what it means to be human at its very basic level.  An acorn doesn’t have that issue – it falls to the ground one day and does acorn things, waiting until conditions are right for it to begin to change and become what it has always been intended to be: an oak. 

But it doesn’t just pop open and spring into a full-grown oak tree just like that. No, it happens very gradually, like some film on photosynthesis back in 7^th grade science class (yes kids, I said film, not video – Google it) where the time lapse speeds up the painfully slow process and you watch the seed sprout up and grow toward the sky, it’s tender shoot twisting and turning and it’s first leaves curling and bending as it sprouts ever upward.  Roots break downward at the same time, capturing a foothold in the earth and nutrient-rich soil below.  Together the roots and shoots provide the nourishment and means for the acorn to develop slowly into a sapling, and with the passage of many years, into the hardy, knurled-barked, mature oak, where it takes it’s place in the cycle of life and lives in balance and harmony with it’s surroundings.

That’s acorn nature, but what of human nature?  What are we destined to become when our roots take hold and we’ve grown upwards and become more hardy and mature and taken our place in the cycle of life?  Are we merely here to serve as consumers of every commodity and product shoved in front of our faces? Are we providers too? If so, then of what? Do we each have different natures inherent in our inner coding, natures that direct each one of us differently towards our fates? Do we have common attributes together all of us, and together with all other living things?

I’m finding it harder each day to believe my nature is to wake every morning and manage other people’s routines and processes, working together as a group for a common goal, motivated more by survival and less by purpose, a thoughtless bunch of labour inputs in some economic model of commercialism…

There must be something more.

And I use to feel it, whatever it was, that sense of guidance and purpose, a right-ness of time and place and knowing I was where I was meant to be. But now I’m not so sure anymore.  And with that uncertainty comes my sense of being lost. Listless.  Adrift on the waves of time.

I say I blame the meds, but I know that’s not the case.  That’s just an easy way out of trying to settle things down around me or maybe overturn them completely.   And as much as I like to believe I have things more or less sorted out most of the time, these days I’m not willing to place any bets.  What I’m seeing these days is that I’m longing to just be, and stop having and doing so much, but not sure how that works or whether we can right the ship and chart a course in that direction – if only I had a compass with that heading.

I’m tired.  It’s July.  It’s hot.  What I wouldn’t give for some quiet peace of mind and shade under that oak tree…