Somewhere under the snow covered ice a silent spring is ready to begin the season’s thaw. Sitka seems to know this. He feels life awakening as we walk on frozen water. Rebirth is both literal and figurative. Today, I am 53 years old. At this very moment, I am flying straight north over the Rocky Mountains to a wedding in Seattle. As my dear friend embarks on a new journey, in a new life, with a new man, in a new country, I know a new journey awaits me. Like the spring I am emerging, starting anew. I am leaving a career of the last 30 years behind. Something under the ice is giving way. There is no clear direction just a yearning to be re-emerge from the winter and grow wings.
Although I feel the stirring of newness, I am ready and willing to just be… be still, be quiet, be aware and be able to listen to a whisper that started more than a winter ago, I don’t know exactly when, but this whisper is acquiring a voice, sweet and clear. My practice of presence is the only tool I have to really hear this voice. My previous lives have always had me orchestrating every note–a mad conductor thriving in the cacophony. Now the notes are sweet and simple. I will follow the tune and listen to where the melody takes me.
The change before me gained new clarity the day before my fifty-third birthday. My a-ha –I need to be a human being, rather than a human doing. I am not always, in fact rarely, comfortable in stillness. I even felt guilty–guilty for not taking a bigger responsibility in changing the world. As if the social change agent I have been these past three decades has not been enough. What I know now–today–is that I am enough. I have done more than enough.
I have even inspired others to do this work along side me. That inspiration has been the torch that I pass on. It is enough.
It is within reason to be reflective, to just be still, to just be for a while–maybe a few months; maybe a few years–to listen to what the next “big thing” is.
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