In the morning, usually just before nine, the sense of purpose with a small but visceral urgency can be felt. Take your medicine. Go to the bathroom. Start the coffee. On the coffee pot that hates me. Or at least I hate it. Now we’re talkin.
It has spit coffee grounds into my coffee every day for the last 1000 years. Other options exist, and I’ve had the time to pursue them, but never the spirit. I keep hoping it will change on its own without explanation. Then Keegan offers a simple, rational one. “You’re putting too many grounds in the filter contraption.” He must be right, because when he makes it— the coffee is smooth and without sludge on the bottom and sides of the mug. But it’s also too diluted for my taste. Can’t a girl have rich coffee?! Absurd it can’t handle my amount of grounds. Absolutely absurd.
I open the refrigerator to reach for cream, then remember we don’t have any. We have not had cream for three days. Another “problem” that is self-induced. Who would have bought more cream? I’m the only one who drinks it. That’s the absurd part Mary. Mind-made problems. Also, why do I care? I do not mind my coffee black. I’d take it sans the sandy grit, though! I actually left the mostly empty bottle of cream in the fridge! Facepalm.This is how off things are. February stains the whole morning. I take my spot on the couch, sip my cream-less, sludgy beverage. At least it’s hot. Drink it down. Deep breaths.
I stare out our windows, relieved by the vastness of this view. The massive size of the field, the strength and solidity of the Boockliff mountain range seemingly right behind it. The proximity of this ginormous rocky range lends me a grounded-ness I find hard to come by. I soak it in as much as I can. I already feel the stirrings about what will happen after I finish my second cup, but close my eyes and let it go. Come back.
I stare at the mountain again, remember that it was here far before me and will outlast my life and all its problems. Then my body and all its problems, by Centuries. Eons. Epochs. Eras? I forgot the order, but this thought is freeing to me because it evokes a stillness, a relief. It reminds me, in a comforting way, of mortality—that all of this will pass. Not just my restless state of mind and broken body, but this house and this current role I’m in and then, eventually, even the mountain too. I am temporary. In this life. Everything is temporary. Everything in the present is as it should be, because it cannot be otherwise. I remember the mentors words and try to quiet the mental chatter. It’s loud today, despite the specific breed of quiet that February brings on. Always hinting at things in the future, spring probably, but, you know, not warm enough to wear shorts now.
I kiss Keegan goodbye and can feel it in my bones that for a moment, each of us wishes we were the other. Not personally, but situationally. No doubt he’d like the idea of having a wide open day. No office, no clients, no endless list of tasks expanding across this week and the next and then into a black hole. And yet I wish I were him—going out into the world, even if that world is an office baring a heavy psychological load. He’s doing something, isn’t he? His time is meaningful, or at least, it seems to matter in a way that mine does not. If even on the toughest days it’s to be reduced to the crudest of meaning—a paycheck, say. That’s something! A pay stub—tangible, real, proof of contribution! What have I done, feed the birds?! Who cares?! I mean, besides the birds. But this type of thinking is all wrong. It will get me nowhere fast.
My perception that a paying job automatically qualifies as meaningful isn’t right. Certainly a job can provide that. But plenty of people have jobs, and what are they fantasizing about? Not having to work. Everything can contain purpose, or be totally devoid it, depending on how awake we are in the doing. Washing your hands. Spotting the cat hunting in the field. (A favorite) Folding laundry. Am I awake? Or is every task a means to an end? When you do anything and you’re truly awake, the meaning is implicit in the doing itself. Not the outcome. Not whether you’ve achieved something. How much wakefulness is brought to each moment, encounter, situation (problematic or not) determines how we live our life as a whole. Job or no job. Healthy or sick. Kids or no kids. Smooth waters/stormy seas etc. Are we conscious in the repetitive undertakings of life, or asleep at the wheel? Dreaming of some far off timeline that is not now? Not this reality? My mind loves to dabble in “What if’s” and “If only’s,” but all it does is untether me further from the life I was given. The one I’m living now.
Ready or not, February or not, here and now is where I am. The mind can tell me that February is awful—(it totally is!) But in truth what is it? The name of a set of twenty eight days, (is that all?!) an intrinsic piece of a Seasonal whole that I’ve decided is wrecking me. That’s just a perspective, though, among millions the mind has. So I can let it go, send it down the river of useless thoughts and opinions. Tolle describes it like this: You wake up, open the curtains, and it’s grey and raining out. Everything is covered in grey and you think “what a dismal morning this is” etc etc. Already you feel it’s not going to be a good day. You’ll get wet walking to your car. And what has ‘actually’ happened? Moisture is falling from the sky. That’s it.
The inner me knows whether it’s sunny or raining, February or July, the stillness inside me does not change. It does not react to atmospheric pressure. In fact, it doesn’t react at all. It sits, undisturbed, always ready to be accessed. If we can only be still and silent long enough to hear and feel and animate it. Tolle also says that if your thoughts are dominating or consuming you, All it takes is one conscious breath. You can’t take a conscious breath and be thinking at the same time. Accessing this inner part is finding wholeness. Connectedness. It’s also where problem solving and creativity and the alive sense of being reside. More permanent than even that Rocky Mountain. And far more steadfast than a February that feels like it will truly never end. (But seriously, will it?!)
February always seems to suspend my mind in something resembling stagnancy. Gross. It’s like a perpetual 3 o’clock in the afternoon—too late to start anything and too early to pack it all up. From where this mental hindrance emerges I don’t really know. It was always easy enough to blame it on February. (Seriously, the worst!) As though this month were a person, stopping me from living life more meaningfully and surrendered. A restlessness all my own I suppose. One that I can either turn in to something good, or let dictate erratic moods for an entire month straight!
The truth is simple. I am a very lucky person and I have to remember this. Inside I am more grateful than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve been given so much and such incredible people. They, and the challenges I’ve moved through, even just the restless days where it felt like nothing matter, have all brought me to now. If I’m alive now, I am supposed to be here. I can do small things with great purpose and great love, and that can be enough, too.
All of this reminds me of Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day.” You’ll likely recognize the last two lines, but enjoy the rest. I only came across the whole thing recently, and I think it hits right at what this mess of words are pointing to.
Health, Happiness, And Not That It Matters, But There’s Only Two More Days :)
FibroM.E.-Awesome 