heart opener
“To train the eye is to train the spirit. ”
Hearts and I have a thing. They sidle up alongside pathways and among everyday surroundings just waiting for me to be head up, spirit open, eyes observant enough to spy them. It wasn’t always this way. I used to just see the stone stepped on a thousand times as part of the path home, or the sushi roll for the avocado and carrots rolled tightly within, or the tree bark as old and wonky. That is, until I needed to be reminded that love and hope is in the everyday, that promise will beckon if we but show up and put one foot in front of the other.
“The word HOPE first appeared in English about a thousand years ago, denoting some combination of confidence and desire.”
The day's been a cool, cloudy start at our cabin today. The water’s going the way of the wind with the fog gliding in concert above. I was thinking during my tour in the woods the other day about fog, about the density felt in a spirt that’s trying to get up and out from under whatever hurt or tragedy or unexpected life something is mounting against. I was thinking about pours of life so stiff that under the weight of one’s own hanging head, how can she determine which dog will offer a bite strong enough to mend?
Everyone possesses a personal level of intake tolerance, a journey unique. There are those who are in the eye of the moment, and those in the mix who are doing the catching, digesting, and wondering in their own way. With that comes a human tendency (and good-hearted desire) to help fix or weigh in on what's best left to time and discoveries that speak to one’s spirit—like hearts, or perfect reads that find, or an unexpected exchange with another that brings a needed bit of peace. We can bear witness, we can show up, but we serve best when softly observing and taking cues both subtle and pronounced.
One of my first reads during our time away this summer was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. I took about 15 journal pages of notes with quotes I want to remember. I read it as a friend to someone with stage IV lung cancer. I read it as a friend to someone living her first summer without her partner because of cancer. I read it as a friend cringing that I’ve likely said or offered the wrong something at some point to the very someone(s) I longed to support. I read it as a mother, wife, and person remembering that we never know what’s around the bend in our living.
In the book’s forward Abraham Verghese offers, “But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others long after you are gone, by your words.” That quote took up immediate residence in my head and continues to dance about almost daily. Only a handful of pages into those terribly powerful chapters and I heard in that wisdom a focus not so much on how or when, but the what and the why (and who).
Whys are good like that. They offer an encouraging reason with direction—putting purpose in today’s step for tomorrow’s footprint.
“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”
When I shared the ‘heart bark’ shot above with a friend this past week she asked if someone etched it there. “No…” I replied. “When I got up close to take a look, I could tell that the bark just fell away from the tree like that to make the shape.” No forcing, no influencing, just nature doing her thing on her own timeline—for no other reason than to simply be... and maybe one day be seen.