by susan | Dec 8, 2022 | Uncategorized
the snow gods have been generous with us so far this winter. the conditions of the skate-skiing tracks I’ve been on have ranged from fair to glorious, which is delightful this early in the season.
and there I am, out there pushing and sweating and panting, same as I always am: working so hard that I neglect to focus on how to be more efficient. this is the key to nordic skiing (and, perhaps, everything): learn to be more efficient. and this involves getting oneself to slow down.
slow down.
this seems to be the theme of my life these days. I’m constantly impatient, wanting things to happen now (or yesterday, more often). I am constantly urging myself to take a breath, pause, and accept that what is, is.
and that maybe I don’t know why things are as they are, but perhaps they are supposed to be the way they are.
learning to balance “what to push” and “what to accept” is one of the most difficult things, I believe, that we humans must master, if we want to be at peace. and the only way we reach that point is to begin by slowing ourselves down.
last sunday while I was skiing I crossed paths with a gentleman perhaps a bit older than I am, who skied as if he’d been skiing his entire life: smooth, graceful, powerful, efficient. on my way along the final track back to my car, I passed him again, as he stood on the side of the track chatting with a fellow skier. he soon caught up with me, made a friendly comment about the wind, and then as he passed me said, “looks like you’re getting the hang of it!”
yep, eight years in, I’m beginning to look like I’m getting the hang of it.
now if I could just slow down, pay more attention to what I’m actually doing, and learn to make the most of each effort I expend… perhaps, someday, I’ll be the one who is smooth, graceful, powerful, efficient.
perhaps.
and the place to begin is in my everyday life. to take more deep breaths, and simply slow down. care to join me?
by susan | Jul 18, 2022 | Uncategorized
twenty years ago I was committed to living a life without regret.
now I realize the naivety of that position, and that I could likely fill a page or two–or ten–with the things I’ve done, said, or chosen that I now truly wish I hadn’t.
perhaps this is simply the wisdom that comes with age (that is so very hard to type, this acknowledgment that I have absolutely aged), with wider perspective, with greater awareness. regardless of its origins,
it has led me to a place of surrender. to truly accept that all is as it is, and to understand that my trying to make things happen is rarely helpful to anyone. to accept that my role right now is to be aware, insightful, patient, grateful, generous, and loving. to have those intangible, oh-so-difficult-to hold-onto things we call trust and faith.
to have a deep trust in the universe. I’ve tried it the other way, and now I surrender.
so far, it’s feeling pretty good. I hope that my list of regrets will stay at its current length, that I’m done adding to those pages.
by susan | May 8, 2022 | Uncategorized
all he needed was courage, correct? and after convinced he’d been given a healthy dose of courage, he began to act courageously.
l. frank baum, through his character the cowardly lion, drew a picture for us all of both the placebo effect and the importance of our internal dialogue and beliefs.
I think about this daily, this understanding of myself, that I could cower inside my introverted self, or I could pretend I am courageous and thus do things that scare the bejeezus out of me. I’ve been working on this for years–decades actually–and I, like the cowardly lion, have made progress. sometimes acting “as if” actually works.
and at times I fail. at times, fear takes over and I become reactive or recessive.
prajna is a buddhist concept, essentially meaning clear insight, intuition of ultimate truth, pure and unqualified knowledge.
when we can connect with intrinsic truth, in whatever our situation, by digging down, distilling, letting go of our protective devices, peeling off all the layers down to our essence, we practice prajna. and this can tell us where we need to go.
breath, life. essence, peace.
by susan | Apr 10, 2022 | Uncategorized
not that I’d rather be something else, but being human is hard. damn hard.
yesterday I wrote a bigger-than-expected check for taxes, received word that I did NOT receive a residency I’d applied for, had a client cancel last minute, and broke a tooth eating a carrot.
today has been better.
tomorrow… I have no idea.
where do we find the courage to continue?
I began this post three years ago, march of 2019, an entire life ago. and I pulled it out of my drafts folder last night when my dog peed on my new rug, my electrical outlets in my bedroom stopped working, and I found myself tearful at dinner with friends because they all seem to have better connections with their loved ones than I seem to.
it’s damn hard to be human.
in the past three years I have experienced incredible moments and times and events, felt awe and wonder and gratitude and appreciation. I’ve been gifted with love and support. I’ve received over and over again. I’ve experienced times of belief in both myself, and in my ability to create the fulfilling life I desire. and I’ve also experienced loss, grief, frustration, impotence. anger. sorrow. moments of hopelessness. times when one of my first thoughts of the day is, I can’t wait to put my pajamas back on and go bed tonight.
and yet, here I am.
hear I am. listen.
like most everyone else, I will keep moving. I will listen to myself, to my heart, and make every attempt to follow where it wishes to lead me. it doesn’t always make sense to me, but I continue to believe that one day it will. rachel botsman describes trust as an active, responsible ‘confident engagement with the unknown.’ let me, let us all, learn to truly trust.
signing off, perfectly imperfect human that I am,
and sending all the love in the world your way. may you always feel the hands and hearts of others holding you.
by susan | Mar 11, 2019 | Uncategorized
(from a work-in-progress)
I walk the desert, thinking of ocean.
anyone who’s spent time at the seashore has witnessed the drawback of water—the exposure of sand and detritus from the last wave, the deep breath of the ocean—before the next wave crashes against the beach’s sandy edge. an empty moment, purposeful, portentous. I imagine this as a metaphor in my life, that I am in the drawback, the removal of what had been in order to cleanse and prepare for what is next. that pause—an interminable dreamlike state that once ended, slips and disappears into folds of memory—which is filled with vision and clarity, the sharp pang of loneliness, self-scrutiny, despair, joy, a sense of dread that perhaps it will never end, and moments of delight painful in their intensity. a pause, an absence. a void that is not in any way a void.
what inspires this thought is a dry wash, a site of former storm run-off that is now a parched channel, cut into a shallow of the hillside. water, gushing, frothing and spilling over the edges; an image familiar yet likely not witnessed here during the past five months. water, precious is this part of the world, a gift from the storm gods. our mountains aren’t formed in a way that allows them to stretch high and poke heavy, moisture-laden clouds, causing them to unleash daily showers, like those in a part of Colorado I once knew. showers in Estes Park, where my grandparents’ cabin sat, were as dependable, each afternoon shortly after lunch, as the warm hug I’d receive from my grandma each morning. those showers enforced downtime, craft time, book time. how would this desert I’m in respond to a daily sprinkle of moisture? cacti may rot, flora might actually flower. dust would give up its rush to fill the air, would instead settle more deeply into companionship with neighbors and colleagues. wild horses would root out more to eat, with less energy expended in doing so. we pray for many things here in Utah, one of the most common being rain. we pray and wait, we sit in that absence.
if I rest in the drawback, take a deep breath, allow it to be, I feel sensation that speaks of both comfort and deep disquiet. fear, this must be fear, the unknown, the unlimited potential for harm. a lack of faith, rooted in what lies behind me, tries to overtake me. I breathe through it, remain in the present, press the toe of my shoe into the crumbling earth of the dry wash. moving my shoe back and forth, I soften the edge, smooth it. I can’t know what lies ahead; the only way to prepare for the unknown is to move deeper into oneself, to center, to ground. breath. footstep followed by footstep. om, mani padme hum.
the incoming wave could devour me; it could be meek and insufficient, leaving me unfulfilled, inducing yet another wandering path.
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