Of Little Gestures and Lifeboats
Sometimes, lately, I’ve found myself frozen. There are things I should be doing—emails to send, messages to fling into the universe. Decisions and ordinary bits of life stuff, waiting. Always waiting. And yet, even when I want to, I’ve been dragging my feet, swallowing the words, holding off.
Why? I’m not entirely sure. I could, certainly, blame the chaos of the world. The unrelenting ache. The horrors that seem sharp and relentless. And yes, that’s part of the struggle. None of us exist in a vacuum—no one is an island. Even if an issue doesn’t directly affect me, it affects me.
I’m a Libra. I like harmony and peace and justice and sweetness and beauty and love. When things are hard, I try to put more of that out into the world, not less. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m a little more tired than usual, lately. Personal stuff and life stuff and world stuff—that’s a lot of stuff. And even the good stuff seems to take more focus than normal. It’s easy, in the circumstance, to slip a little more sideways than normal.
There are times in life where I’m not quite sure what I’m doing, but I’m doing it with gusto. Other times, I pull back and turn into a bit of an enigma. Sometimes, I just yell PLOT TWIST. We love to think of life as clear cut, a straight line, easy to navigate if you keep your eyes open. But is it, really? Or are there a lot of curveballs and questions marks?
There are times where the best thing to stop and breathe and evaluate. But sometimes, you’re simply delaying the obvious or the inevitable. Sometimes, you look away, because looking at something dead on feels like too much. And in the current world we live in, everything already feels like too much. It’s really hard to be a person, sometimes.
What I’m getting at, clumsily, is that there is no timeline. There is no right path. There’s just you and what you decide. And there’s something both terrifying and comforting about that. Because life is just a series of choices. Of heartbeats. Of little gestures and lifeboats. Love and all its mess. Curiosity and all its chaos.
I’m thinking of all the times I’ve said no and walked away. And all the times I’ve said yes and walked toward. Each moment is powerful. Each moment was a change, in its own way. I think when things feel difficult, it’s easy to hold on tighter to everything—what we want, what we think we want, what we thought we wanted. Because there’s clarity in sameness. But what if that’s simply stubbornness is prettier clothing?
What if—now that is a dangerous question. But the best questions are often that. Do you dare to eat a peach? What will you do with your one wild and precious life? Etc. Etc. Etc. The poets are always looking, always asking, always poking at what might be/could be—and also what is. There’s beauty, if you look up. Even amid everything. There’s love, if you reach out a hand. There’s peace if you make it. Peace isn’t just something that happens to you. You don’t trip across peace. You build it, brick by brick. And sometimes, The Tower falls, and you build it again.
If you’re a little stuck and uncertain right now, too? That’s okay. Being a person isn’t really easy…ever. It’s kind of ridiculous, honestly. But the outtakes and the missteps and the what-ifs? They’re all beautiful too. I hope when you look back on everything, you see/feel the warmth in all the times you veered a little off course. How you stopped and took a beat, because in a rushing world, not rushing is an act of rebellion. How the quiet sometimes fills up with memories and they bring a smile to your face.
Because, like a weed growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, sometimes the impossible happens. And it was exactly what was meant to happen. Amid the mess of life. Because every breath has taken you to this moment—good or bad, easy or not. Everything has conspired so that you are standing in this very spot. And while the universe tends to have a sense of humor, sometimes, you just have to trust it—and yourself.
One thing I forgot last week — I wrote a poem with Kambriel, and we got to work with the amazing folks at Enchanted Living. Snag the issue! It’s full of so much beauty!