Setbacks are a Part of Life Too
September 11, 2022
Well friends it’s been a challenging week for me. I overdid it, at least with one thing last weekend but possibly I had been overdoing it little by little and building towards a crash. My body began to tighten up and by mid-week I was in full-blown constriction. It’s been a rough few days trying to find a way back to a place where my body can come to rest. I’m hoping it’s a short setback but also trying to pay attention and not push too hard. It certainly is a lesson I keep having to learn.
As I was lying there in pain all I could think about was what I might be missing at the lake. The sunrise, the flowers in bloom, the migrating terns passing through. Sometimes I wonder if what I do in this way is important enough in a world that’s on fire and needs so many to do so much. Yet each time I have to be away I am reminded that it is important to me. It connects me to the joy of being alive, of experiencing life in this precious world.
If there’s a reason I pushed too hard, it would be my burning desire to be back out there and feel fully alive - and that’s a bit like speeding to get to your destination. It doesn’t get you there faster and if you crash the car. I definitely crashed the car this week.
In her book, “Braiding Sweetgrass”, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about the “Honorable Harvest”. She talks about asking the plants to be harvested if it is ok to harvest and honoring the answer if it is no. She talks about never taking the first or the last and always leaving half. I think about this in terms of my body and what I’m asking it to do. How often do I ask, “is this ok” rather than just trying it to see if it hurts? Am I leaving enough in reserve for restoration?
I’m taking a class this month at Poetry Forge from Chris LaTray called “Poetry as a Spiritual Practice”. A writing prompt he gave us this week included “What is the distance between the life you are living and the one you seek.” I found myself writing:
“The biggest distance is acceptance of the life that’s mine vs the life I imagine I am supposed to lead.”
(Note: Chris writes a wonderful newsletter called An Irritable Metis. Chris is as down-to-earth as it gets and I love that.)
A humorous story from just before the body crash. A first-year red-tailed hawk and a first-year Cooper’s hawk were chasing each other all around the cove, engaged in an epic battle (or maybe just playing). They landed in a tree above my head. Then from nowhere came the first-year blue heron that’s been hanging around, squawking as loudly as he could the whole way. He landed in the tree too, as if to say “I have had ENOUGH of the two of you, this is MY cove.” The hawks looked at him kind of funny - and then went back to their battle, chasing each other towards the woods. Just like kids!
Take good care of yourselves friends! Until next week.
crashing is indeed part of life. sometimes i think that the world is in a huge pile up and we don’t even know it.
take care, rest, and most importantly, allow yourself to be lazy. i’ve found that sometimes the best medicine is not taking myself so seriously — which means, laughing out loud, enjoying my problems, watching dumb things on TV, and taking breaks from the things that mean a lot to me.
easier said than done of course. but i believe in you. ❤️
Good post, thanks. Important to remind ourselves we live on a real planet, living a real life, with all the limitations and chances to fly. By accepting our limitations we give ourselves more chances to fly.