things I think about during the second spring of a global pandemic

Birds singing in the morning is one of the most hopeful sounds on the planet

Right now, I’m listening to the one that says, Judy, Judy, Judy.

I’ve been drinking my coffee every morning from a springtime cup.

I’ve been walking every evening.

I’ve noticed my seasonal allergies aren’t quite as bad this year as they normally are, which I suppose is due to mask-wearing.

While I’m grateful for masks and vaccinations, I am so tired of living this way - the way of a global pandemic.

I’m tired of grieving lost things.

I feel thin-skinned, like if you held me up to the sun you could see right through me.

At the same time, I feel stronger, more grounded, more myself than ever.

There are so many things I used to care about that I don’t care about anymore; so many things I care about now that never occurred to me before.

I am still here at my parents’ house, providing care as my mother recovers from her broken arms and wrists.

Walking in my parents’ neighborhood is like walking in a neighborhood of doll’s houses.

One evening, I was walking past a house with spring flowers blooming in the front yard, a canopy of blossoming trees. The air was crisp and cool and sunny. A car pulled up in front of the house and two young people got out. They had a picnic, which they carried across the street to the park where the old trees twist toward blue skies, carpeted with moss and snowdrops.

I don’t know what it was about them, these two people, their youth, the obvious love flowing between them, the way their compact car eased up in front of the house, but watching them swept me through with longing.

With such an intensity, I wished for my life back, my own youth, time.

I often walk past the house where my best friend lived when we were in high school.

I walk down the street of fourplexes that I’ve always loved because it doesn’t feel like Lexington (the Lexington feeling is a topic of another time.)

When I took my mother to the doctor last week, she said about my mom’s fall, “Everything happens for a reason.”

For the record, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, which is to say, I don’t think everything that happens in life is predetermined or planned by God or part of a soul contract or has deeper hidden meaning.

Sometimes things happen because of free will choice, accidents, laws of nature.

What does seem true is that we can find meaning in most things. We can create meaning.

But the doctor saying this held within in it a good intention, a hopeful outlook, a way of reframing a difficult and upsetting situation.

It was a way of saying, “What gift can you find in this? What’s illuminated?”

I like to walk on the mulched trails at Ashland. It feels very much like walking with ghosts. I like the soft mulch beneath my feet, and while I listen to my footsteps, I consider the ongoing dance in my heart between nihilism and optimism.

I wonder how much of the soul’s journey is decided before birth, how much of this life is contracted, planned, and how much is random?

We have free will, but how much?

Do we truly have free will or just the illusion of free will?

Are we in a simulation of some sort and if we are, if we are something akin to a sim, what does that mean about God?

While we certainly can’t prove that we aren’t in a simulation, and while it sometimes seems that we are, I have trouble squaring that with the concept of a loving God and one thing I do believe (and experience) is God as Love.

I wonder about how much of my spiritual belief and practice is simply a coping a mechanism, a way of tolerating this world and this life which, while beautiful and exhilarating is also painful and scary and sad.

I grow weary of spiritual platitudes, binary thinking, absolutes, hyper positivity, and people telling myself to me, so I try to be mindful of not telling other people to themselves, though I’m not sure how successful I am with that.

This morning as I was walking out to get the paper, (they still receive a newspaper here. Someone drives by every morning and throws it into the yard) I was thinking about how I’ve never felt that I fit in to mainstream thought or perspective.

I realized that while this is still true (maybe more true than ever) it is no longer something that bothers me. It’s not something I feel the need to change in anyway.

I am fine with being who I am, believing what I believe, dressing how I dress, liking what I like, wanting what I want, and saying no to what I don’t want even no one else in my life understands or shares my views.

Astonishingly, I mean much to my surprise, I find that I’m also fine with the shape of my body and the wrinkles on my face.

There is such liberation in all of that.

And this is, after all, my free-spirit year.

It is good to be friends with one’s self, to be accepting.

Maybe if self-love feels too far out of reach, self-friendship is a more accessible goal.

This is what I thought about as I walked barefoot down the sidewalk to retrieve that tiny, thin little newspaper that my dad likes because of the word puzzle.

When I have that feeling - the one where I want my life back - I’m not actually thinking about the decades of my life that felt stopped or stuck - the poor decisions I made - the wrong turns. Those things are all real and have ramifications, but what I’m actually thinking about is how much of my life I spent not being friends with myself.

Not being friends with yourself is a thief.

Being your own enemy robs you of full experience; it robs you of clarity; it silences the voice within that knows what’s going on - the voice that guides you down the path of however much of your life is planned or has a path.

The voice of God.

If it’s true that you’re here on this earth with a mission - being friends with yourself is where you begin to figure out what the mission is.

That having been said, I should also point out that I’ve given up on knowing what my mission is, if in fact we each have one.

I do feel like - and this is just a feeling, purely intuitive - that there has always been a path unfurling in front of me and there has always been guidance nudging me on the path and I have made choices that kept me on the path and choices that took me on wild detours.

What I feel like right now, at this point in my life, is on path.

It’s a mulch-laden path and deeply enchanted.

I cannot see ahead.

I have no idea where I’m going.

But I think my feet are where they are supposed to be, and the reason I think this - or rather, feel this - is, I’m at peace with myself.

When I say I am at peace with myself I do not mean that I’m without desire.

I am a person of wild and intense desires. I love to dream and plan. I love to change things - from furniture to circumstances to the color of my hair.

I get crazy restless and I respond to the restlessness by doing things.

What I mean when I say that I am at peace with myself is that I no longer look into the mirror with disdain.

When I make a mistake, I am conscious of not saying to myself, “I’m such an idiot.”

I mean that I am allowing myself to be myself and when another person is actively or passively critical or questioning of me, I don’t feel the need to appease that person or defend myself or alter myself for approval.

I just am.

This is me.

You may be thinking it took me a long time in my life to get to this point. Honestly, I don’t know when I got to this point, but it’s just something I recently noticed.

It used to be that reaching for opportunities, asking for things that require someone else to tell me yes or no, undergoing assessments was uncomfortable for me. Rejection or the threat of rejection could disable me.

I recently noticed that I don’t feel this way so much anymore.

I trust that as doors open and close and I choose which ones I’m walking through, there are two of us in on the decision making - me and Spirit. I may think a door is the right door for me but if I knock and it doesn’t open, it’s simply not the right door - no more, no less.

I’m grateful for the places that want to hang my paintings, the publications that want to publish my work, the friends who enjoy my company, but the places uninterested in my art, the publications for which I’m not a good fit, the people who feel rubbed the wrong way by my - those just aren’t my places or my people.

It doesn’t bother me anymore because it’s how it should be.

Why would I want to court anyone’s attention or convince someone to like me?

I would rather my life feel harmonious. I would rather be where I belong with people who and situations that are a good match to me and vice versa.

So, apparently I do believe in destiny and guidance, but I’m also aware that this logic often breaks down and its entirely possible that every woo-woo mystical spiritual religious belief I have is simply a way for my mind to cope with the fragility of a random and meaningless life.

It’s possible; but nothing about this intricate and beautiful natural world indicates that is so.

I believe what I believe about God because of my experience and observation.

I go with the the truth that feels true in my body.

Last night I was walking home from the park. The sun was golden, going down. There were clusters of people all along the road, standing in the medians, talking.

I overheard a young girl complimenting a woman’s necklace.

“It’s larimar,” the woman said.

I didn’t look over to see the necklace, but I thought of how beautiful larimar is and how it must be laying gently in the center of the woman’s clavicle, likely teardrop shaped, I thought, and set in sterling silver.

I walked past a tiny little cottage that I’ve often admired. The front door was open and I couldn’t help but look inside. There was a dog - a fawn colored Lab- standing at the door making soft grumbling and woofing noises.

His human appeared and softly clucked to him.

“Come on,” she said and they walked together toward the back of the house. The backyard, I thought, is likely filled with daffodils and violets and bird baths.

My heart swept with the longing again and I realized no, it isn’t exactly longing. It isn’t that I’m missing something or wanting something I do not have.

The sensation is not about regret or loss, it is about revelation.

Every now and then, a moment unfolds, illusion dissolves and I am standing in the center of the intense and exquisite beauty of love. A young couple on their way to sit on the grass and eat, a woman and her dog going to the backyard, a cottage with pink front door, a girl admiring the peaceful blue of a larimar pendant, a souvenir from a trip to Costa Rica.

These moments are the meaning of life.

These moments are the truth of who we are and why we are here.

What feels like longing is actually gratitude.

The miraculous mystery of being here.