sitting still

I'm sitting to write before the news of the day hits.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with a very wise person, who listened as I explained that I get an anxious feeling, a restlessness that I feel like I've battled my whole life. A desire to accomplish some unknown, unnamed something in life. I acknowledged how blessed I felt about my life, so why this rattling inside of me? I stopped talking and he said something that I feel the universe has been trying to tell me forever -- slow down, settle into the moment that you are in because all of these moments are life. Always thinking about what I need to do next, what I need to accomplish takes away from what is happening at that moment. This fear I feel -- fear of what, I'm not sure, will subside if I can really allow myself to focus on what I am doing as I'm doing it and not dumping all of the other stuff on top.

It seriously was a lightbulb that shined so brightly that I felt like I could finally see all that was in front of me. I am always running through life, overwhelmed and unsatisfied -- a marathon that has no finish line, no feeling of accomplishment because the entire race has only about getting to the end -- and ultimately missing the joy of the run, the sights around me, the way my body feels as it moves, the exquisiteness of the act itself. My mom had always told me that with everything in life, I never stopped to really revel in the successes or accomplishments because I immediately was on to whatever was next. This is so true but I never understood it.

The past few years I've had a number of frustrating health issues, culminating last January in a near complete break. I was exhausted, in pain, on the verge of feeling hopeless. I went from one treatment, one surgery to the next, and still the pain persisted. The pain is real, I know this, but I also feel like my body is finally telling me -- Enough! I can't live at this pace, I can't just move to be moving, exhausting myself in my everyday turmoil. I need to feel okay sitting in my life and being conscious of the beauty of all of it, the mundane to the exhilarating -- because each of these moments are actually life and if I settle into them, I can feel a sense of peace rather than frustration.

I turn fifty in a few days. I'm okay with the age -- I am grateful that I have made it here. I know so many who haven't. I have lived 29 years without my father who died at 47. This year marks ten years since my mom has gone. Maybe I wanted to let life pass by without really settling into it because in all of it there is going to be pain and I need to let myself feel that too. Sprinting through it doesn't stop it from happening. It's taken me this long to realize that I am in a constant state of change through it all and the fears and emotions I've attached to past experiences will not be the same as they were when I was twelve, or twenty, or forty. I am not the same person because I, willingly or not, change with each day, each experience and how I feel in future experiences will be different because I am different as well. This gives me a tremendous amount of peace. I don't think of it as giving me control, it just makes me realize that whatever comes next, it will be new and I am not locked into a set response -- I just need to open myself to it and know that in the good and the bad, I am alive, I'm feeling it and I'm very happy to have that freedom.