I've been reading other people's blogs. I've been reading and wondering and wandering. My mind is impatient this morning, and more than a bit weary. Up early for a swim. Second swim in three days. I am fit, but I don't feel strong, not running. Which makes me wonder: what am I seeking in my quest to stay fit, if it isn't to be fit? My routine is fairly grinding, but I hardly missing a planned work-out. Why? I don't have an answer. I wonder if I will find one, and whether I will like it, or not.
Here's what I'm doing tonight. I tried to post the poster, but it didn't work: my siblings' band Kidstreet is playing in town. I am staying up late to go dancing!
More napping needed.
I'm trying not to think about the dentist appointment booked for tomorrow morning at 7:30 (who does that to herself?). Or the dr's appointment the next day. Or plans to go out Friday night, and to throw a scotch party here on Saturday night. Which will mean cleaning this whole disastrous kid-friendly house. Which means I'm trying not to think about the living-room, either, strewn end to end with the tiniest toys the children could find to strew about. I'm not thinking about the missing library book, due Friday, already renewed to the allowable limit of times, and nowhere to be blinking found. While I'm at, I'll try not to think about the half hour I already spent on my hands and knees this morning looking under things for this book while cursing the tiny toys strewn about everywhere.
Instead, I will think about lunch. And coffee. And napping. And blogging. I found some great posts out there this morning. My friend Rebecca blogs about taking a week off from blogging due to feelings of inadequacy. She ends with a quote from Marianne Williamson, which coincidentally my yoga teacher read out to our class on Saturday evening, and which I meant to share here, but it slipped away in my shavasana daydream: "It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us." And yet. My virtual friend Kerry blogs about Gabrielle Giffords, and how the miracle of her very survival is yet somehow not enough for the narrative of redemption that has been foisted upon it. How we crave the light of redemption and recovery, we want that story. "The narrative of her 'recovery' has been so remarkable for its falseness, for its abject denial of the realities of brain injury," writes Kerry; the piece is worth reading in full.
I have to tell you. My darkness frightens me. But maybe it's true that my light does too. Marianne Williamson's quote goes on: "We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world."
Can we play big, be our better selves, and be truthful about the darkness in each of us, the inadequacies, the mysteries, the wondering and wandering, the good luck and the bad? Well, yes. I think so. I think that might be why I blog.Labels: Big Thoughts, blogging, writing