I had the strangest thought today while taking out the trash.
It was in answer to a question which isn't so strange during this season. “How will you deal with death?” It didn't speak words across my brain, but it sat like a steady lump of meaning which has not yet dissolved into speech.
But my response was fully formed: “That’s alright, as long as this earth should stay.”
I must have jolted back a bit as I walked, I was so surprised. I always feel old in winter, feel like life is bleeding unstoppably from my body. It sounds ridiculous- I am only 29- but I have always loved life too much to not be afraid of dying.
I thought. After I felt this response, I realized that maybe I loved life only as far as I could see. I was like an infant who thinks when they close their eyes, the world they love and need disappears completely. But the world I love will spin on without me! The beauty doesn't die with me.
An important truth to realize, though difficult to maintain rooted inside me. Still, maybe it was the long season of winter which has taught it to me, nursing me in the rootedness of death, reminding me that live things must be stripped to make way for the new. If I truly love this world, I will leave quietly when it is time to make room. Peace results from this understanding.
Sometimes I wish I could stop writing these journals until things are pretty again, until life feels significant. But the point is to write my way into meaning something. If we just listen closely, trusting that wisdom ebbs up continuously into the banal order of life, then we will be ready to receive. And when we are ready to receive, good things begin pouring.
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