If you think you have your life planned and are fully in control of it , think again. You can wake any day and find (as I did) that life has something else in mind. I am sure this Rock Samphire did not plan to be any particular shape. It just grew, but wind and nature formed and changed it into a heart. So let go your plans! Just live and see how life intends you to grow.
I am not lazy.
But I am not overly industrious either.
I prefer to get around on bicycle or on foot.
And I like to make things or paint things or write things.
(Though I’m not good at finishing them).
Leaving ‘stuff’ undone fills me with great happiness and gives me the feeling that I will live a long life with plenty of time to tie up loose ends.
On my time off from work, I don’t usually plan what to do, preferring to see what the day has to offer me, watching it unfurl.
It always gets filled to the brim.
On such days small nondescript things catch my eye.
The pattern left by the dregs of my cup of cappuccino as I sip it when chatting in some cafe with my daughters.
The shifting creams of the stones on the beach.
The striation marks on a washed up log.
The layering of stone, water and sky, broken by the flight of four swans.
The distorted black tree trunks in my local woods. The skeleton of the flower of the sea holly.
The shoreline changed by the storm. The silhouette of a seed head.
Water like the lace of a wedding dress. The turn in the river as it reaches the sea.
I gather stones and pieces of wood here.
But mostly stones
Small oval grey ones.
And after planting a stone flower garden,
I struggle off the beach, my pockets weighed down.
My home is filled with them.
And when the humor takes me I draw white patterns on the smooth surfaces.
But not all need my attention.
Some have zen like white markings of their own.
When life becomes problematic, I hold these stones in my hand and watch with interest as my worries come and go.
I do nothing more.
Some would call this inertia
I call it curiosity.
I am the observer rather than the participant.
And anyway Life changes constantly.
When going through a bad patch I console myself that it won’t be forever.
Two things can happen, It can either get worse or get better.
But it definitely won’t stay the same.
Some people embrace changes.
Others struggle first before succumbing .
When I started to write this blog I thought I was at the beginning of such a change and I set out enthusiastically, writing weekly, maybe even oftener. Documenting.
My pieces were too long for some.
We live presently in an era of speed when there seems only time for short sharp posts, allowing the eyes to skim swiftly.
(One reader remarked how she loved my blog for its photo’s but never had the time to read it).
But the length of my posts were not a conscious doing.
I didn’t do a word count and say ‘Nine hundred words so now I’ll stop’.
The words flowed effortlessly and came to a conclusion by themselves, usually at one sitting.
If I was enjoying the writing of the post in an exceptional way, I might hold back, draw it out over a few days, relishing it like a chewy toffee.
But as I wrote post after post, I realised I was not at the beginning of a great change.
The catalyst in my instance had been my illness and now healed, I had come to the end of the great upheaval and with the help of the yellow bicycle have ridden the storm and arrived at a more stable place.
So what now?
I will observe its stability with interest
And wait and see.