Part of my basic personality is to move toward that which I fear. This tendency takes me on adventures that others may or may not recognize as such, but I feel the pressure from within as fully as if I were facing a dragon, and I seem to need these adventures on a regular basis. Sometimes reading (or watching movies) about others' adventures helps----that is, it clears some sort of pent-up energy within me.
The ability to change (chameleon-like) in the moment, depending on one's surroundings, isn't often valued in our culture, and is sometimes considered downright despicable, as if the person just can't make up her mind. And yet, in my recent attempts at practicing some of the precepts of mindfulness, of attempting to be as fully present as possible with myself and the world, I wonder whether these actions are sometimes construed as merely indecisiveness. I like to experience (if only in my mind or by putting myself in proximity----as the proverbial fly on the wall) both sides of the fence, in addition to balancing between (yet I've always hated "wishy-washiness").
This is how I learn, I suppose, a kind of tasting the air (rather like snakes do) yet none of the "learning" seems to stay with me forever because I want to keep testing myself in the fresh air of a new day, a new place. In fact, I seem to have given up on any concept of "forever" as it might apply to WHO I AM. The idea of being FIXED in any mode scares the heck out of me. And yet, I once believed that this is what aging meant: that we become an accretion of thoughts and ideas and experiences. . . that this is our DEPTH; this is what our MEANING is (and the converse would be a skimming shallowness of being). But that can feel so heavy.
I don't think this way now. The labels (and their accompanying judgments) aren't important to me anymore. BEING is. Ah hah: The Incredible Lightness of Being!
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| Potted orange tree at a friend's in Louisiana |
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| Tiny anole (we just call them "lizards") on a limb of the potted orange |
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| Up close and personal (and if this little one stayed for a bit longer on this branch, she'd turn brown) |
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| "Petting the dragon" (an iguana) on a vacation in Costa Rica in 2007 |
