humbleness

I sit here, going through old writings wondering if I should post any of these old pieces to my new page. And then it dawns on me that I am doing that all too familiar bad habit of procrastinating. If I want to write something then I need to write something. That’s all I have to do. Pick up the pen and paper or pull out my computer, open up a blank document and start to write. So here I am. Baring myself naked in front of all of you, just like this page sitting and waiting for the words to be typed on to it.

I haven’t written much this year. I’ve been busy. Busy working, busy living, busy grieving, busy in the flow of it all. I am building this brand, slow down with syd, and yet I find myself all too often having to remind myself to slow down. There was a quote I heard in a podcast recently, “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” Something like that. And it rings true, loudly in my soul.

I slow down. I begin to notice all the little things I was missing while I was rushing through. The bees sipping nectar out of the basil that’s gone to seed in the back garden. How I can see and hear the wind before it hits my skin. The birds singing in the morning. The moon hanging around into the early afternoon. And then slow turns to smooth. Everything starts to feel divinely aligned. I hear the call to be a doula, a scholarship for a prenatal yoga training pops up on my screen, i meet the woman i will train with as a doula in the training, i go to her house for our first meeting with plans to pick up a hammock i bought on marketplace after we meet, the hammock lives just five houses down from her. While the hammock makes for a bit of a silly example, that is truly how smooth my life was going for about six months. I kept telling people that I was riding the “ask and you shall receive train.”

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

Smooth turns to fast. Fast turns to speed wobbles. I don’t like going fast. I had my first bad day in what felt like a very long time. Don’t panic, it’s just a day, it’s normal to have a bad day. But if you’ve ever experienced speed wobbles, you know how it’s most likely going to end.

That smooth wave I was riding surreptitiously morphed into that all too familiar bumpy road. I’m sure I resisted. Because I’d much rather wake up in the morning, pour myself a glass of water, walk out into the backyard and fantasize about how beautiful my garden will be one day, how beautiful it is in my mind’s eye. I’d rather walk out and hear the birds sing, feel the warmth of the sunshine on my skin, take a deep breath and whisper “thank you.”

That quickly morphed into being too tired to get out of bed. Waking up and my first thought being “i wish i was still asleep” or “i cant wait til bedtime.” If you’ve ever experienced these types of thoughts or feelings then you know how heavy and draining they feel. If you haven’t, mazel tov. I realized over time I had slowly stopped doing all the things I love to do. I stopped stepping onto my mat to practice yoga. I stopped dreaming in the garden. I stopped posting on my plant instagram, a big part of my creative outlet. I stopped teaching. I stopped preaching. I was too busy blindly zooming down the hill.

I’m not someone who can do the same thing or eat the same thing everyday. Living like this slowly drains the life out of me. It’s like someone poked me with the tiniest little needle imaginable and the life is just leaking out of me one teeny tiny drop at a time.

Issues in my relationship with my partner started to surface and I didn’t see them coming. Or maybe I did, but I very suavely swept them under the rug. So suavely that I was dumbfounded when they jumped out at me like “hey there! Remember us?!”

Shit.

So, smooth is fast. And fast isn’t always bad. Fast is only concerning when I’m moving at the speed of light yet convinced I’m a snail. Maybe I’m some creepy super speedy GMO’d snail from the future.

I find myself getting irate when something unfavorable shows up in my life. I think to myself, “haven’t I been through enough? Must you really add this to my resume of resilience? Or is it now that it’s been three years since i found my mother dead, it’s time for me to get back in the game of fucked up shit happening to humans?” I don’t want back in. I want out. I want to run. I want this to go away. I want to go back out into the garden and daydream and watch the bees sip nectar from tiny flowers that I planted and whisper “thank you” out into the universe.

I’m not saying that these things are no longer available to me. They are. I am still fully capable of dragging my ass out from in front of the tv into the backyard and whispering thank you. I am still grateful. And I still love the bees.

But life has been tough. And sometimes that wears on me, on my soul, on our soul. If I let myself, I could grieve forever. I could sit under a tree, lay down on the Earth, and weep with her forever. We all could do that. And sometimes I think maybe we should. Maybe that’s exactly what the world needs, for us to lay down our weapons and our armor and our bodies; and grieve.

Only to reemerge when the rain washes our egos and fears away, the grass and wildflowers have grown atop us, and our bodies are composted into the soil. We would surrender and we would rise back up out of that very dirt. A new seed would sprout and out would grow a better world. A world where we took care of each other as if we were each other’s children. A world where money didn’t matter and power was distributed equally. A world where we led with our hearts instead of our heads. A world where we intentionally moved at a slower pace, mindful of how the little bumps in life keep us from gliding too smoothly down the mountain. A world in which we remembered who we are.

Creatures of the Earth, of course. Not much different from the dog cuddled up in your lap, or the wasp outside your window, or the cow in your refrigerator.

Oh how vital it is to hold humility.