Dear Friend
Being human I find my mind maddeningly hopping from one foot to another, pulling me ahead or re-running repeats of the past. Like a faulty closed circuit system, skipping and slipping, refusing to rest in the present moment, the only place we truly live.
This morning for example. Rising in the dark. The day’s duties looming large. Not so much the things that must be done, rather the consequences of not doing, the risk of exposure. Exposure to what I wonder?
So many of us worry. It seems like the sensible thing to do. I remember the first time it happened. Not unhappiness, sadness. I’d been sad before. I was understandably attached to my mother, so much so that the vague shadowy prospect of play school were troubling to my young mind. The gloomy old sandstone church, with its echoing hall. The strangers, kind enough but mysterious in origin. I adjusted to them, but couldn’t claim to be happy, no matter how many water colour paintings they thrust upon Mam, when she finally came to my rescue.
Like most kids I was okay feeling. I could cry out my frustrations and hurts just as well as the next toddling newbie. Snot and tears, perfectly apt given the circumstances of our descent to earth.
Worry is a different beast. When we are young we live in the present moment. Blissfully unaware of the twin spectres of past and future, we have to learn to make pictures in our minds. We build our mental maps of the world. The environment works on our synapses. It’s a web that weaves us, worry is the spider, experience and imagination her silk.
When Nana died I’d turned 11.
Starting secondary school (middle school in the States) had been exciting. I liked the polyester blazer. I was in a hurry to grow up, mainly I was keen to buy Dad a pint at the local welfare centre’s social club. Drive a car. Impress a girl. Dad told me 18 would come around quick enough, but when you’re a kid time can be an achingly slow dimension.
Future. Wanting. Waiting.
Nana lived in the past. I’d started school when she was here. “Don’t smile until Christmas.” I heard they taught the new teachers. I wonder if the teachers noticed the change in the boy?
For sure the web was woven. She was here, now she’s gone. How can that be? What is this place? How can someone be here, so alive - even in the suffering of her sickness, then be gone? Not like Summer or Spring, sure to return, but an endless winter.
Insomnia. Worry. I’d lay in bed dreading. Not knowing what exactly. I’d forgotten how to breathe. I was locking up the energies of grief. No-one talked, no-one knew what to say. There was now a past I longed for, and a future that seemed uncertain.
Growing up like that, your mind starts playing all kinds of tricks on you. My peers for example, what was going on with them? You can get to feeling like you’re off to the side, out of it, even while you go through the motions.
We have to grieve our losses. Our culture isn’t so great at that. We weren’t back then and although maybe it’s a little better now, we’ve still got a long way to go.
What I’ve learned to do, is a practice. Finding someone to talk to, I became one of those people myself. Remembering how to breathe, feeling down into my body, out of the heady rush between the ears, into the warmth of the beating heart. Here. In the present moment. We find ourselves.
These trips into the past. It doesn’t even matter if we’re making them up.
What matters is that we find ourselves in the here and now.
You and I.
However we do that.
Showing up for one another.
Know that you are enough.
What if this universe is alive?
What if you were held in an ocean of love?
When you feel okay, it is now.
It comes as a nice feeling.
When peace comes.
It is now.
You, reading this,
You are loved.
Let this moment.
Last forever.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey