Daily Dose of Radical Humbling
There’s a lot of joy to be had these days. Of course, it’s always been there for the taking, but there’s something different about this landscape. My environment has shifted and my mind and body have adapted, and once again the process has restarted for a new journey. I’ve always been a bit guilty of finding a certain level of comfort and jumping the gun to quickly uproot all that I have created and move on somewhere new. Some may see this as a strength, others a weakness. As for myself, I am still constantly battling between the glass half full or leaning towards the empty side on any given day.
But this time is different. There is something in the way the wind pulls and sings through the aspen trees on it’s way through the endless forest here. I can’t help but feel immense pleasure and pure sensation in the mornings when I sit quietly outside. And when I take a moment out of my creekside walk to sit atop a rock and bathe my dry and tired feet in the rushing waters. The water more pure and inviting than I have ever experienced, running straight from the last bit of snow melting atop the highest peaks of the Rockies. This land is fertile and alive. Each piece of the vast nature puzzle playing its own sacred and necessary part. And that part changing and evolving as the weeks, the seasons, move forward each year. Nothing is permanent yet everything is certain that it will once again be its rightful and most flourishing self. With that, I find, possibly for the first time, that I do not need to stay in any given place for long to reap the rewards that it has so graciously bestowed upon my life and my perspective.
I feel my most flourishing self emerging on a daily basis. Whether that feels strikingly painful in moments of inner reflection, or being one with the day and sitting to silently embrace the summer. Sometimes it creeps back into its shell as I question everything. Other days, without a care in the world other than the wildflowers and all their many colors. I may not know what is next or how long I will feel my most alive here, but the stillness and peace I have learned in such a short time will never leave me. Even if like a fond memory at times, it will return again because it now lives familiar deep in my muscle memory. It cannot leave me for long now that I have known its true sensation. As it is simply no longer apart from me, but lives deep in my bones. I want to share this space, both outside and internally, with all that I know. So many need to experience this sense of wonder and generosity that nature has for us.
Removing myself from the city life, full of ambition and hustle, often has me questioning my purpose and drive at this moment. And how much that is worth on any given day. Of course the need for accomplishment and recognition will never leave us as humans. But it holds its own unique time just as the quiet stillness does.
The moment for "being" is calling me more and more often. And I find myself giving into is as it calls. With wild abandon I welcome the ever changing path that lies ahead.
So to the Rocky Mountains, a place that has invited adventure and cast away fear on a daily basis, I say thank you. Thank you for showing me my true colors as they emerge. Stripping me bare of the titles and the identities and the societal recognitions and interests that I so often reach for. Out here, we are nothing but human. Nothing but a being trying to find their way through the woods. It’s radically humbling to say the least. And I am ever so grateful.
