Real

There came a point, this month, where my flow met an obstacle.

Just an obstacle in my mind, but it was no less of a blockage than any dam in any steadily flowing stream. 

When my son was a small boy, we would spend long, summer days building dams across the Arrow River below our home, using large stones, smaller pebbles, much energy and a number of finger nails, to slow the water enough to create a swimming hole above and a fast-flowing cascade to one side, where the water could escape under pressure through a deliberate gap in the wall and whizz small boys on boogie boards at great speed to the other end of our pebbled beach area.  The pool we created was always deep enough to be jumped into from the path up above with an extremely satisfying splash.  Hours and hours of sun and fun.

What I noticed over these winter days was that, on paper, I didn’t seem to have walked very far, despite all the steps I’d seen and all the steps I’d enjoyed taking.  Treading water in this pool above this dam, looking back, looking around, looking inside, I felt my flow slow, swirl and eddy.  How could I be in such a different space, and yet not be?

Of course, as my husband pointed out, my different space had come about because of all the different places that have been a part of my year.  I had dreamed of travel, I had dreamed of   locational freedom, and those dreams came true.  I am not in the same space as last year.  Not in any way. 

And so, perhaps I needed to change how I was seeing things.

Because what is more successful than dreams coming true?

 I loved my time in Europe.

I loved my time in Bali.

I am loving my time in Marlborough.

I will love my time in Arrowtown as we run down towards Christmas.

I love that I know who I am, what I’m purposed to do, and how I am purposed to do it.

I love that this could be anywhere.

What a long way I have travelled, and what travels I have ahead of me.

This knowledge punches a hole through my worry so thoroughly that I whizz through the gap with  all the joy that relief releases.  And with a new learning.  It sometimes doesn’t pay to look back too much.  Or to look around at others too much.  Or to look inside too much.  Faith in the past, loving now and hope for the future that keeps me looking ahead into my dreams.  It is time to step out of myself and into my world, the world that I want to live in and see.

It is time to say that that I am glad to find myself exactly where I am.

"I exist as I am, that is enough, if no other in the world be aware I sit content, and if each and all be aware I sit content.  One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, and whether I come to my own today, or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait."

Walt Whitman.