ground
“Write the damn blog!” she said.
If she said it once, she cheered it a dozen times.
Eyes a bit brighter thanks to the coffee we fetch on our return route, she is my mid-week hit of life checks, faith in the fumbling and figuring, high fives in the strides, and a promise that joys shared are multiplied while burdens partnered become all the more bearable. What is life but a daily walk of hope, joy, promise, and consolation in all that’s around us? We’re just meant to get busy living amidst it all. But that busy sometimes pushes aside our coulds and shoulds when days feel like an ongoing round of ‘whack-a-mole’. I imagine we all stare down a been meaning to get to, a maybe one day something that just needs the now in all its imperfection, goodness, and “MOMs!!!” on any given day. Write already. Call already. Do already.
As I set out for my Sunday walk on Mother’s Day I felt content, grateful for the pace and sunshine. Passing opposite on the path, one by one, a smiling runner would cruise by. “They look happy… she’s not going too fast… that sweat brings a shine… while it’s been a while, knee, whatcha say?” So as I neared the park’s edge where cushy path gives way to pavement, I picked up the pace. I strode up the route my husband and I used to tour for kickstarting or unwinding our days. As I clipped my way up inclines I thought about that once upon a time advising I’d read about running uphill—about keeping eyes trained not on the ultimate goal, but only a percentage of the path before me. Bit by bit. Stride by stride. Sure, maybe a progress glance at the horizon from time to time, but in the interest of staying the course, only the immediate was for the digesting.
It being Mother’s Day, I started thinking a lot about that too. The many peaks and valleys of, the summits and hill climbs of any given day. I love it when people refer to challenges in life as mothers. "Man, it was a MOTHER of a…!” What a fitting reference to something being tough, hard to crack, not easily tackled. The thought made me smile, made me think of many MOTHERs I know and the angle of their climbs—the diagnosis, the life partner gone too soon, the child who challenges, the resolve to fortify a union, the self preservation in cutting the ties, the strength to weather the now, the will to wait out the darkness—and all on a grade of promise in her smile, in the voice that maybe shakes but finds its strong, in the courage to name what she needs, in the radiance that springs from a well so deep and true.
Eyes on the next hour. Eyes on the next scan. Eyes on the next session that will give her tools to tackle the waves. Eyes on whatever vice that won’t be her crutch tonight. Eyes on the morning dawn that gifts another day. Eyes on that crack of hope where the light gets in. Eyes on what busies as she waits out the “maybe not yet… but hang in… here's enough for today, and then tomorrow, and then the day after that.”
What pads the route? Where are the stations along the way to refresh? Who buoys when the stretch is long and the pace isn’t matching with others on the course? When’s the cowbell gonna ring already to rally the stride of getting to where one needs to go? How does one believe in an “I think I can” outlook for the foreseeable that eventually becomes a remember when?
Faith. Promise. People who can carry your story in their hearts and in their showing up when needed. Resolve to not buckle. Trust in the slow work. A belief in an eventual view with lungs burning, eyes brimming, hope churning.
The only personal best worth knowing is within the one who’s doing the journeying, in days all the stronger, in a spirit—one day, one hour—all the lighter. Relay it when needed. Pass the baton for the next leg. Slow to a pace that keeps you upright. Walk already.
Pearls she calls ‘em, when I pass along a reflection, a verse, or a read that strikes a chord. When I think of pearls, I think hard-pressed, endurance under the waves, staying power against the grain til it’s time to shine. Mothers of the ocean, perhaps. So here’s today’s pearl—on the damn blog—to encourage that ongoing belief and promise in whatever path life’s set before you.
Climb on. Press on til you shine.
You got this.
GROUND by David Whyte
from Consolations—The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Ground is what lies beneath our feet. It is the place where we already stand; a state of recognition, the place or the circumstances to which we belong whether we wish to or not. It is what holds and supports us, but also what we do not want to be true; it is what challenges us, physically or psychologically, irrespective of our hoped for needs. It is the living, underlying foundation that tells us what we are, where we are, what season we are in and what, no matter what we wish in the abstract, is about to happen in our body, in the world or in the conversation between the two.
To come to ground is to find a home in the circumstances and in the very physical body we inhabit in the midst of those circumstances and above all to face the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be; to come to ground is to begin the courageous conversation, to step into difficulty and by taking that first step, begin the movement through all difficulties, to find the support and foundation that has been beneath our feet all along; a place to step onto, a place on which to stand and a place from which to step.