I am tired today. Tired and depressed. Today is a valley.
Tonight was a main event outside. Let's focus on that.
There are three super moons in the next two months. The first one was tonight. This afternoon, I felt chills and exhaustion sort of settled in. I took a 2.5 hour nap.
There is a list now in my purse of what to do when you're depressed. I don't leave it to chance. So, I took advantage of the super moon, bundled up for the cold and sat on my backporch. I played my new wooden flute, burned some sage and tried to just embrace the experience. It was good. It felt like enough in the moment.
I find that I have been programmed to approach events with a preconceived idea of what I want out of that experience. We don't have room for much mystery.
As I sat playing my flute, breathing in the sage smoke, I just sat and soaked it in. I didn't think. I just tried to be in the moment and observe. Be aware. Smell the pungent sage. Listen to the notes I was playing. Hear the ducks, blocks away, quacking in the night. See the silhouette of maples against a blue/black sky. Look at clouds backlit by the moonlight. Breathe it in and say thank you to be alive.
I don't feel less depressed, meaning I don't feel hopeful or better, but I feel like I made a connection with myself and something greater than myself. I feel I responded to a natural rhythm of the earth and that the more I do this, the bigger the impact will be positively over time.
My acupuncturist calls this the law of minimal improvements when discussing physical health. I believe there is something correlative to that in how we live. Small decisions about how we live, it all adds up to us, I guess. Our decisions define our reality and who we end up being.
I want to be more oriented toward mystery and less understanding of the end before I begin. I am ready for more discovery in my life and less prescriptive activities. Sometimes those are nice, but in general, we know what it's like when we see a movie in a theater. Sometimes that's exactly what I want, but lately, I am less interested in more of the same, regardless of how good it is.
So yes to slow living and observing, to the long process of evolving into a better, healthier person. Here's to being depressed but not being stressed about it. Here's to doing beautiful things when you could descend to distraction instead.
Mainly though, here's to just being, such a different life posture than trying. Much like Love is a greater force for change than control, Being opens up so much hope that over time, doubt feels like a lame option to select from the menu.
I'd rather choose curiosity blended with sadness or uncertainty over distracted cheeriness any day.
Being gives me that option.
Being doesn't demand that my problems are resolved before I enjoy the full moon.
Being is the pathway to that very healing I have tried so hard to find in some many other, more urgent and demanding ways.