Recurring Themes

Paying attention to recurring themes sometimes means hearing an unusual word several times in different contexts over a short period of time. Today, Kiva wrote about chiaroscuro, a word I've come to love for its lovely mixing of black and white, and which I've heard or read several times over the past three days (after not having done so for some time). When these synchronicities occur, they naturally serve to slow us down, tugging insistently at our skirt tails like a child demanding our attention. I have to stop and wonder why. . .

Is it because I tend to set up arguments in my mind about how I "should be" by facing them, chessboard-like, against each other? I am either doing well or not? I am either happy or not? I am either reading and learning or not reading and not learning?

How absurd! And yet, I face these sorts of dilemmas daily in my mind, dilemmas that are set up poorly and thus are problemmatic from the start.

Sometimes, our lives improve simply by recognizing that we have set up faulty ways of perceiving, of questioning, of exploring. It's a matter of puzzling-out a knot in the tangle of our thoughts, a knot that we didn't even realize had formed until we trace it back to its origins and actually feel it.

How freeing it can be to untangle and release that energy. . . every day. . .