Connected

2020 has not been the most disconnected year of my life, that honor goes to the year 2000.  I lost my mother on Christmas day of 1999 to 11 years of a progressive illness.  I also lost my father; he went away mentally the same day she died and himself died in the fall of 2000.  Through that year, my kids and other family and work were were all at a distance, a mental distance.  I was not really there.  I was not really anywhere.  I did what I had to do each day so I could go to sleep and do what I had to do the next day.  It was the worst.

2020 is only my fifth worst year.  Without social media and internet, the disconnection would be much worse.

Maybe it is fifth because I had already lost most of the people I miss most.  Maybe those earlier worsts gave me better coping mechanisms.  Maybe it is because I'm older and less attached to everything.  But generally speaking, for most of us, the collective us, it is a really bad year: WWI and WWII bad, Spanish flu bad, the black death bad, the twin towers bad.   A year that we that live will remember unfondly till we die.

Finding something more to hang on to will be helpful; Something bigger than myself.  Something bigger than all of our selves.  Not a holiday, though, or a religion, or a belief, but a feeling.  That big feeling, like astronauts got when they looked back at earth; like Gautama got under the tree---transcendence.

I want very much to renew those connections that I have occasionally felt to the universe.  Those transcendental moments where everything is good and I know I belong on this planet.   Those moments, and they are short, they are always short---but the memory of them is huge and breathtaking.  

How to reach that more often.  How to reach a point where that is always just a breath away.  I don't know.  Maybe the answer is meditation or yoga, maybe it is more painting (for me, for you, whatever you do with your whole mind, woodworking, dancing, running, singing, redecorating, cooking--Your thing.  Maybe it's more nature walks, more sleep, more writing/journaling. 

Or, maybe it is letting go of those things that drive us; competition with others, trying to get more of what we want, trying to advance at work.  Maybe we all need to take what we learned this year and put it into the arsenal of coping skills we have for dealing with life.  

Patience, solitude, breathing deeply and slowly, mindfulness.  

Maybe those treats this year, the long soaks in the tub, the single glass of wine that is tasted and sipped slowly, the feel of really clean and soft sheets after a hot shower.  Stuff we have all the time, but are so rushed and driven we never appreciate their wonder and delight.  That is the stuff we need to keep.

And in keeping those, perhaps we get to identify more of those transcendent moments.  This year I planted flowers and instead of hurrying along so I could get on to the next thing---well I had no next thing.  Buying those plants was a big deal this year.  I went out when the nonessential businesses finally opened, wore my mask, and chose my summer flowers.  I took them out and planted them by myself.  It was my first year in this yard and it is nothing like my previous yard.  It's a yard that has seen multiple families struggle before doing better and moving away and a yard that has been the last home to several couples after the family has grown up and moved away.  It is a yard much like the house, neglected from lack of funds and lack of handiness.  

My goal is to bring it back to life.  But if I only let it continue to disintegrate, isn't that some law of physics. ( "The center can not hold"  I can feel that law on my own body these days.)

I planted, one plant at a time, carefully unpotted, hole prepared with better soil and size appropriate for the roots, then filled in, watered.  All the while the sun of April was on my back and shoulders, my hair warming, the sound of children in the schoolyard and the birds twittering nearby.  The light around me was soft and the air was free of either chill or heat.  A spent 4 hours on a 30 minute job.  It was a wonderful day--and while alone, I felt connected to everything.

Connected.  Part of the sun, part of the air, part of the soil---it's a loving and peaceful feeling.  

I hope to take that connectedness and make it part of everything I do everyday.