Everything is Waiting for You

It was a typical Saturday morning.

Running through the morning rituals, I perused Facebook and read the following stanzas posted by a dear friend.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~David Whyte

And I started reflecting...but as is true to form in my loud life, that only lasted a few moments before the kids started fighting, breakfast had to be made, wet towels needed to transferred into the dryer, beds were beckoning and I had to hunt down running shorts and a yoga mat.

I couldn't get it out of my heart, "anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you..."

Pushing myself as hard as I could, four miles into the run, it hit me...stop placating, stop accommodating, stop trying to be that which you are not.  You were created to be you.

A fast shower and onto my yoga class, the instructor said, "We're going to spend the first 10 minutes laying on our stomach with our feet propped up on blocks and our eyes closed.  In fact, the only thing you have permission to pay attention to is your breathing.  I will cue you when someone enters the room, but you're not to look up.  There's nothing to see...only time to hear and grow deeper and deeper into you."

Post the class, I sat in the steam room and started processing the yin yang of the morning...and then drove back home to kids climbing the walls ready for bike/scooter rides to the park.  After sweating my arse off, I came back and read another brilliant David Whyte piece:

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Most of my life, I've grown really good at being the woman that I think is best for the situation at large.  I know how to navigate the terrain and morph into what needs to be for the moment.  But as I've grown older and have experienced joy and sorrow, I'm deeply aware that we are here for a purpose and that we are given one voice...our voice to share in the world.  And like the bird or the kettle or the run or the yoga practice or the making of beds or the pouring of cereal...we are not alone...we do our lives in conjunction with all that surrounds us and our responsibility is to ensure that our voices are still singing as we sojourn...because if we all morph into one, well then, what kind of a world would that be?

Everyone is waiting for you and for me.  It's messy.  It's sometimes hard to negotiate your voice in a sea of responsibilities and parties of those who would dominate it or change it to fit the "greater good," but while they are singing their song and vying for their needs, you must continue to forge your own....no matter how alone or tiring it feels.

Until one day, you look up and realize that the chorus including your solo contribution is the most beautiful and satisfying music you've ever heard.