i sat on the floor in front of my bookcase.
'i could use a little wisdom,' i thought.
and i knew i had tons of it available right on my book shelves.
i thumbed thru poetry books, books by my favorite authors,
pages of highlighting i had done in the past, and new things i hadn't read before.
lotsa good stuff, but nothing hit quite right.
hmmmm....
i eyed the book on midlife.
i had bought it years ago. not consciously realizing i had wandered
into a mid-life crisis, but i musta known somehow as i ordered this book out
of the blue one nite. and it was thru that book the 'aha' moment came -
'THIS is my midlife awakening!'
hard to believe i didn't realize what i was doing when i ordered it,
considering it's titled 'awakening at midlife'!!
makes me laugh just typing that out.
yes, i'm thick...but i DO get it sooner or later.
a few pages into the book i realized that yes, indeed, this book was talking to me.
and yes, indeed, i was in some kinda mid-life passage.
that was years ago.
and it took me years to walk thru it.
i've often wondered if you only have just one awakening or crisis or whatever
you want to call it.........do you have one, get thru it and then you're set?
nah, that sounds too easy.
as far as i can tell at this point, it's waves after that. some bigger than others,
but waves of stuff to wrestle with and grow from. but that was the big one.
(maybe?)(hopefully)(prolly just wishful thinking...)
in the first pages of the book, she quotes james hollis, a jungian analyst and writer
who 'likens this stage of midlife transition to the movement of tectonic plates,
the large geological formations of the earth's surface, crashing against each other.
the ego and all the values of our youth are in deadly combat with the wisdom of
Self, the deep place inside each of us that understands and knows the realities
and the losses yet to come during the rest of our life.'
i smiled when i read that.and the sighed deep.
oh yeah. oh yeah. i remember this. and oh yeah, i've lived thru this.
and yeah, i've come thru the dark lost feeling of that time.
and i don't feel like i'm heading back in there.
but i do feel like i'm sitting on the edge of something right now.
something that has a haunting similarity of that awakening time i went thru.
and i'm not sure what it is.
it feels full of possibility. it feels right. it feels necessary.
and it makes me feel a bit lost at the same time.
lonely. but not in a bad way. in a way that just is.
i have questions i have no answers to.
i can't figure out where 'i belong.' or 'where i fit.'
and yet i have a vague understanding that's misting around inside of me,
but i can't grasp it.
and i think i'm okay with that.
i don't think i have to grasp it right now.
i have this haunting, vague, lost, lonely feeling and somehow i feel really
okay about it.
i've been noticing things that feel good to me and make me feel centered.
and things that unsettle me and make me feel off kilter.
i've been leaning towards the centering things. stepping aside from the other.
and thinking that's all i have to do right now.
that and listen.
as i'm not even sure what i'm sposed to be asking, i thought maybe i should
just listen.
it's such an interesting spot to be in.
and the unusual part of it for me is i'm actually trusting it.
all the thousands of times i've said 'trust the process.'
go figure, for now, i'm actually doing that.
and it feels right.
i have no idea which part of the process i'm in.
if there even IS a part with a label that i could relate to.
or what i'm sposed to do with it.
so i'm doin' the best thing i can do.
i'm headin' out for a walk.
i haven't been on a walk in the morning in a million years.
it's been calling again.
and i'm listening.....
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