I took a walk this morning. I need to get back in the habit of exercise, light as it may be. I also need to do something with my newfound clarity. I realized that this clarity brings with it a numbness. Not a choking, crippling, or bitter numbness, but a numbness that is allowing me to separate emotion and thought and really focus on the experience.
This must be something that normal, rational, less ardent people evidence on a more regular basis.
A walk seemed like a good thing to accompany that.
Well, at the end of today's sorting time, I started to actually look around. I opened my eyes and started to fully take in the picture that I'd been walking through.
Yes, I'd noticed the ducks and the geese. I'd politely smiled and nodded and greeted fellow walkers with a sincere good morning, and I watched the squirrels scurry about doing whatever important business was so important that they had to scurry about to get it done. I'd even been aware of the gravel crunch underfoot from time to time. But I'd been so busy focusing on the images in my head that I didn't really open my senses to the day.
It's a great time right now, weather-wise. It's chilly and windy, but not so cold that you can't talk yourself out of staying in bed. My only necessary defense against the cold was a sweatshirt and a scarf. And the sky is a disarming shade of blue gray that seemed content to settle over the green water and against the occasional red of my little trail.
It all makes for quite the scene, and alone it would surely be enough. But today brought an added bonus. Today the prettiest thing was the leaves. Taking them in I realized that it actually looks like Fall. That pretty much never happens in Texas. So imagine my delight walking the path along the lake, seeing that the leaves were making a delightful background of red and yellow and orange and brown and green. It was lovely.
Do you know what lovely means? I looked it up once. Beyond the idea of being "delightful to the eye, heart, and mind" or "highly pleasing", which are both beautiful and warming, was the definition: "capable of being loved." You are lovely. You are capable of being loved. You inspire the greatest and strongest most powerful emotion there is. It's been one of my favorite words for as long as I can remember because there is something so sweet about that idea.
This morning, the leaves were lovely. And then, more than that, they were loved.
They inspired warm feelings and made me start thinking about the fall. And how beautiful it is. How the colors in the trees stood against the sky and then shared that same beauty scattered on the ground as they fell. And the loss. For a minute, the loss. And after that minute, I realized, maybe Fall isn't about leaves dying. Maybe it's about the trees accepting change.
I fight change all the time, but it's one of the most natural things in the world. The trees accept that their leaves must die in order to start anew. That needs to happen. But if only it were that easy. I don't fight change because I'm stuck in my ways or afraid of new things. I fight it because I don't know what it means for holding on.
Isn't holding on a part of that eternal optimism? Isn't holding on about faith? Isn't holding on about keeping hope alive and fanning the flame when it threatens to burn out? Does change mean I can't cling to these things I hold so dear?
Change. Acceptance. Hope. Holding on and letting go. What's smart and what's right. Balance. These are not things I claim to fully know or understand. I wish I did.
Maybe I can take a nod from the trees. Maybe I can say that the leaves may change, but the roots stay the same, and that which grounds us is most important. That time makes you stronger to the way things have to go. That our branches will still reach out. Any combination of things to make me feel better. I want to feel better. Maybe I did for a moment. In a lot of ways I still do. I haven't lost my clarity. I haven't lost my peace. But I just get so easily attached to my leaves. I want to keep them forever. My leaves are lovely. My leaves are loved.
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