In motion all day. Never stopping.
Night time hits. All kids asleep. Finally.
Absurdly quiet. Aching to veg. First moment alone with myself.
I let my haggard body sink, melt, dissolve into the cushions of my couch.
House Hunters International is on. It's always on this time of night. TV power -- click... And I feel freedom.
But not really.
Because I realize that all day I have been nourishing, mending, loving, feeding brains and bodies and spirits outside of my own. And my brain, body, spirit is hungry for care. And although so much of me desires to be swallowed up whole into that couch, there is more of me that wants real nutrition. The kind of nutrition that will feed my entire soul: brain, body and spirit.
I pick my body, all exhausted, off the couch, and put on walking shoes and a jacket. I leave the house, detaching myself from that world in there; that world that I love, but a world that is always in need of my perpetual attention.
I walk in silence for awhile; then eventually put in ear-buds. A book, a talk, a song, awakens me from all of the vacuous monotony. I drink in the real sustenance I have been yearning.
Some days I find it in writing, or reading, running, breathing, bending, creating good food, or eating good food, photo taking, photo editing, learning, really learning, listening, befriending, remembering.
All of which require action on my part.
This kind of nurturing, this kind of freedom, takes effort. And sometimes I just feel completely out of effort. So achieving this can be admittedly hard.
But only in the beginning. It's hard in that first movement, that first choice that gets us off the couch. But once we are in motion, we find we are absorbing it all so intently. We must have been so thirsty.
And when nourished in this manner day by day, we become more eager and we realize our lives are richer.
Every day we must urge our tired beings to do something, at least one thing, that seems hard but that is feeding us personally. Something which inspires, challenges, arouses, enlivens us.
We will then recognize we are revived, restored, more awake. We will have more to give because there is more of us that can give.
All because we made the effort to get up and stay alive.
(Photos taken by Laura D'art)