Dear friends,
Every morning when I open my eyes I lie in bed for fifteen minutes before I slide out from under the covers. This is a predictable start to an average day. The day’s broad outline is predictable, too: Get the kids up and out the door. Return to my desk, do the writing and the thinking and the editing and the communicating. Get some exercise. Get the kids. Cook some food. Hang with the fam. Read. Go to bed. And repeat.
But that’s an outline. In a more fleshed-out version, there’s very little I know about what will happen today, next month, next year. I set goals, try to engineer outcomes, endeavor to make decisions with as much data as I can possibly gather - but still, so many questions can’t be answered.
I fight this. I try to fight it with more information, more thinking, more talking, more pushing forward on the goals. If I push hard enough, something will give, right? We’re taught to push (shoutout to Western-style childbirth) - it’s vital, part of hard work. But pushing without purpose - it’s painful.
So then I have to ask, what is the purpose of having answers to the questions - major and mundane - of my life? Is it because if I know the answer, I can’t be wrong? If I know the answer, I don’t have to be afraid of whatever happens - or doesn’t happen?
That’s not right.
Maybe the thing that gives pushing its potency is actually its opposite - yielding, or giving in. Maybe if you just chill, and give in to not knowing - embrace it, even - you can be astonished by the possibilities that turn up. It’s an easing - and for what it’s worth, taking it easy is a very good way to take care of yourself.
Thanks for reading along while I externalize my midlife crisis,
Leigh
A conversation on the sidewalk with a friend this morning illuminated some of today’s note to you. Here is a poem by said friend, one of many fellow askers of questions -
The Trees Acknowledge You
All night we digest & submerge, dip wind
& moon to illuminate each other’s branches.
Hiving in our stillness. This is the give & take.
We squirm under our leaf blanket. Claws scar
our ridges – we twitch as we harbor hawks
& nestle squirrels. Can you hear us
panting the sky? All day long, we talk beetles
& honeysuckle. And we listen. The rumors,
your troubled heart. Confess it.
Our wounded limbs ache, joints tired
of all this poison. We expect frost.
Don’t you come from seed?
That sticky darkness. Do you ever think of
what clings to grow & what becomes lost?
In the company of warblers, snakes, weasels,
we witness their loss, mourn. Our roots beneath
the soil now their anchor. Come to comfort
in our shade. If we could, we’d gift you
a crown of thistle, watch you lose skin
to bark, blood to sapwood. Will your hands
vine? This love we have for you – you hear
our hearts snap when our branches break.
Just as whole as you are.