To Where I Am

Today, I am wrapped in a blanket, sitting in my office full of windows, contemplating where I am.  Where is the present moment?  What lies within it?  How does this moment, impact the next, and the next, and the next.  I realized I am spending the present moment contemplating what the next moment will hold, and bleeding this contemplation into the next moment, and the next and the next.  Ahh….the essence of anxiety and/or excitement.  Anticipation.

As a healthy person, I was present, and forward-seeking, working in the now and in the future, to clear the path.  I embodied no sense of time, I could just bask in existing.  I pursued whatever I wanted, and loved every second of it-even the hard parts.

As a person, tagged with labels of Cancer, disease, dysfunction, a person with more pill bottles by her bedside as weeks progress, basking in my existence means basking in mortality.  It is being keenly aware, the clock has begun ticking (even though it always was).  It took less than two years, for cancer to strip away my identity, sink its grip deep into my flesh, and begin feeding on my body, mind, and soul.

As the cancer is waging war, my body is making steady work of loosening its grip, at the cost of other organ systems, taking up extra work to ensure I can function each day.  I love my body more today than I ever have.  It is working incredibly hard to sustain me.  For this work, maybe time, nor identity, nor existence matters.  Maybe being present is really just showing up for myself, and what I need at this moment to support the process of healing.

To now, to where I am, I need a nap. 🙂

Stormy Middles, Joyful Outcomes

Today is a stormy day.  The sky is dark and breathing with rain.  The wind gusts and the trees dance.  This storm is leading to something.  It is leading to the outcome of new life.  From bug to flower, bird, to bunny, creation is heavy in the air.  This storm’s outcome is nothing more than nourishment needed to bring about the spark of life.  It is truly remarkable, and brings me great joy and fills my heart with love and life.

I focus then at a single tree, swaying and swirling, just going with the flow. This tree took root and grows, powerless to everything around it.  It can’t protest the weather, its limbs being trimmed, birds taking residence, or bugs penetrating its very core.  

Power matters not.  It seizes opportunities of sun and rain to grow into the earth, outward and upward.  The essence in its powerlessness, is the essence of altruism.  I could look at this tree as my lungs.  It takes my out-breath, and creates the in-breath that sustains my life.  It is my air without acknowledgment, without reward.  The birds grow their families, feed from its fruit, and there is no thank you given. 

I can be like the tree.  I can go with the flow, allow powerlessness to be power, and know the outcome is nothing but the simple joy of existing harmoniously, and symbiotically with where my roots grow.  I can reach ever outward, and upward no matter the stormy day.