it's always about balance
reframing the extremes
Well hello there, again!
I can’t quite believe it, but this time next week I will no longer be literally watching my breath as I strike the match to make coffee, without power, in the obsidian mornings.
On Monday I am soaring far north, following the route of the swallows who left a few months back, and flipping seasons and day length.
It is a situation that is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
I have registered for a printmaking course and will be making the most of my time in one of the cultural capitals of the world, to learn and explore and study all that I can.
I will have a chance to hug and drink tea with family members who live there and spend time sharing bread and memories, and stories that were not told on the video chats over the past four years.
It is terrifying because I leave my young adult children behind in a country with intermittent power, the coldest, wettest winter in recent memory and high crime rates that we have become accustomed to in the way one learns eventually to walk with the stone in your shoe.
I am hoping to be able to maintain my posts weekly and share insights and discoveries as they unfold, but if I miss a post, please do not think I have forgotten you.
At the moment, I have a nightly appointment with my Kindle at 3am due to the insomnia that has been plaguing me as I prepare and plan and try to mitigate any and all eventualities. The book I am currently reading is James Hollis’ What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life.
I have always known that I hold both extremes of situations. It is not just the happy to sad range that most people seem to inhabit., I perpetually leap from despair to exhilaration, or terror to glee.
Part of my meditation practice is learning how to hold both extremes non-judgementally and accepting that that is how it is with me. I am learning that the extremes are not a foretelling of impending doom or boon, they are simply a function of my heightened sensitivity and vivid imagination (and possibly a little added anxious disposition to boot!)
So, back to my pre-dawn appointment with James: the following line struck me in that deep, resonant way that a gong sounds when the mallet hits it perfectly in the centre:
“Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises..:”
How wonderful to be able to reframe something in these terms.
As I mature, do the work and learn to embrace this temperament of mine, I find that I am able to more fully inhabit my life and not just sit on the edge, like a cat on a riverbank, watching fish flow through their watery world.
Diving in to join them, the mesmerising experience of fully inhabiting this world, of noticing colour, detail and the shafts of light catching leaves suspended in the fluid silence, invigorates me. My imagination conjures stories and I marvel at the inventiveness of it all.
The work has been to learn that the shadows that appear are not necessarily those portending doom, terror and certain death, but more likely just a leaf floating down into the pool, or a cloud passing like a thought across the sky.
And with that simple image I bid you adieu, as I leap into the next week filled with complexities and strange surprises.
Thank you for being here and I would love to hear from you if this resonates.
I think that a lot of creatives feel this way - deeply sensitive to our world, with imaginations that run amok!
What a privilege to be able to meet, share and explore together.
I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Nicola x
Yes this absolutely resonates with me! I love the line you quoted from the book, however we might like life to seem straightforward and like the thought of being able to plan, life is indeed complex and full of surprise! I can be very affected by anxiety and that feeling of impending doom and have begun exploring seeing these thoughts as clouds floating across a blue sky too - but need a lot more practice!
I hope you have a truly wonderful trip and that all stays well at home, and anxieties subside to give way to joy in your times of creativity and being with family.