Words and such.

It's all too easy to get caught up in what someone said or did – positive or negative. But, while the positives lift us up and lighten our hearts and step for a fleeting moment or two, the negatives...well, they stick. 

I can still remember many of the mean or hateful or off-the-cuff, unknowingly hurtful things that have been said to me through the years. When I was in late elementary and junior high school, I was larger than average, and that weight was the target of some comments that pierced straight to the heart. Even now, much slimmer, those words still ring in my ears and rattle in my head every now and then, in a weird purgatory of what feels like a million years ago and just yesterday all at once.

"But then you got fat," my best friend tossed out on a sunny day.

Sing "sticks and stones may break my bones" until you lose your voice, but the damage a person's words can cause is powerful enough to be reversible and irrevocable. But, really, that power and damage (or lack thereof) rest in your hands...not anyone else's.

Though there are days and times when I have disagreed – and certainly junior high was one of them – things said under the guise or pretext of meanness and hurtfulness are not a one-way street but a mirror. A reflection of the speaker's deep-rooted and often un- or under-recognized unhappiness, dissatisfaction or anger at life and the way it's unfolding.

I know that, ever since George Costanza's infamous "It's not you; it's me" scene, the phrase sounds tired and trite as a breakup reason and anything else. But here, in this instance, it's anything but. It's truth. When someone says something derogatory, it's not you. Not your struggle. Not your cross to bear. Not your words to internalize. Or rationalize. Or hypothesize. Not even a blip on your radar. 

Remember that. And, when you hear something rude or mean or intolerant or spiteful, exhale in and then release the breath, and with it, all the words just spoken. Let them out. Let them go. And go on your way, as if the moment never happened.

Do you ever listen to the sound of the earth?

Saturday night, I rolled the car windows down while it was raining. Listened as the droplets gently thudded the windshield. Invited the wind to rush in and meet my ears, creating music like no musician can.

For the first time in a long while, I heard thunder. Not just the rumbling noise. But the soft, subtle sound of reverberation, as it touched the sky, the asphalt, the buildings.

It was a gentle and beautiful reminder that this is the stuff life is made of. Water and air. Ether. Earth and fire. Things that were here long before us and will no doubt survive us.

Even with the many distractions at our fingertips, never does it cease to surprise me: What captivates us most is not shaped by the hands and minds of mankind. 

So listen. It brings a peace like not much else can.

 

Occupy Your Life.

All through dinner, I sat quietly. Went back and forth on what to write for this post. J chatted between bites of risotto. I heard his voice, but nothing registered until I felt a question hanging in the air. Emptiness where my answer should've been. And then came the realization: I had no idea what he said.

Sure, it's not startling. It happens (or has happened) to almost all of us. Our inner dialogue gets the best of us. Sweeps us away, and, in turn, closes us off from the connections we could making. The experiences we could be having. And the richness we could be cultivating. 

When you're preoccupied, it's hard to occupy your life.

Going Thoreau.

Sometimes I want to go off the grid. Lakeside. Mountainside. Farmside. Doesn't matter. As long as there's a cottage. One that sits high off the road and water first spits rusty from the faucets. The type of place that has no yard. Just earth. Maples and tall pines poking holes in the clouds. A rambling dirt drive. And skylights to let in the sun and frame the stars.

No past, no future. Just now...and crickets. Beauty, optimism, and simplicity settling like dust in every nook and cranny of existence.

The interconnectedness of all things.

In 2010, my husband and I spent two weeks in Montana. There was much to love. Small towns. Larger-than-life scenery. Idyllic mountains. 

Driving down a lonely highway, we spotted a patch of trees set well below the road. We pulled down a rock-studded path. Trees stood on both sides of the car, trunks white and striped with black scars. Shining gold like paper-thin coins, round, yellow-green leaves on every branch, quivering and shimmying with the wind. 

It was magic. 

Two nights ago, I came across pictures of our trip. And there they were again: my dancing trees. Quaking Aspens.

Yesterday, in the middle of our buzzing work floor, a coworker whispers, “Don’t think I’m crazy…but I fell in love with a tree.”

He’d been in Oregon.

I laugh. Raise my eyebrows and touch my fingers to the keyboard, ready to Google what he tells me.

“Quaking Aspen,” he says.  

And, there it is, right in front of my eyes. Not the image of the trees, but something too beautiful to call happenstance. Synchronicity. A small world.

The interconnectedness of all things.