Tag: gratitude

On Wishes and Finding Our Way

By Catherine DiMercurio

We are here again, edging our way toward the end of another year, bracing ourselves for whatever is next and trying to inch forward in our own lives, no matter what’s next.

I’m still in the habit of trying to solve my own future, solve for x, study each element of the equation as if some part of me truly believes there is a right answer to find. I do believe we are very much comprised of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. But sometimes experiences knock us around, begin to shape those stories, and we have to spend years trying to unbelieve words that have written themselves onto our hearts.

I tell myself stories about belonging because it often seems that I find myself living in places I don’t feel connected to. In truth though, everything ebbs and flows, and discontent arises when I don’t feel connected to myself, and for me it is also true that this disconnect happens less often and less intensely when I’m in natural spaces—near woods and water. And so I keep trying to connect those dots, find the path to where I am supposed to be.   

Today is the solstice and I have been writing different versions of this essay for weeks. The words have had a tough time finding their way because I have plans in the works that I want to talk about but I also feel it is premature to talk about all that, so I keep writing around it all, even though it impacts no one whether I say this or that. What I want to tell you is that I’m trying to move again but I also don’t want to say it out loud in case something gets in the way and my plans are thwarted. I don’t want to jinx it, but I also want to make it real, call it into being. Saying I’m trying to move near Lake Michigan feels like a bold statement but being vague is confusing, and since this is one of the biggest things tumbling around my head and impacting my life, it is hard to say nothing at all. It is hard to write about anything else. When your heart’s on your sleeve, it’s impossible to play things close to the vest. And it is the solstice which is a magic day and therefore good for wishing.

Because of this trying to move, this deciding, this moving toward a lifelong goal, I am making other decisions, like take a break from pottery, which feels uncomfortable and necessary and like there will be a gap, a big place where something is supposed to be, like when you lose your first molar as a child. How is it gone, and don’t I need that, and how long will it take for something to take its place? My ceramics journey is far from over but there are times when we need to pause. I tell myself it is an artist’s decision, to move toward inspiration and peace and wildness and curiosity, and even though it means saying goodbye to one place, one community, I will find another and art often thrives in such curious and tumultuous circumstances. But I left the studio in tears the night of my last class. I don’t know the last time I was more grateful that I had pushed myself into something new, into that first pottery workshop I did with my kiddo.

While the point of pausing pottery is to focus on getting my house ready to sell, the pause might also be a good opportunity to embrace some writing projects that have stalled a little. But it is also a good time to remember that we can only do so much. We can’t underestimate the toll of the full-time job, especially when it asks more of us than ever before. We have to hold so many conflicting notions in our heads at the same time—being grateful for meaningful work and a paycheck but also feeling that work often leaves us little time or energy to enjoy the rest of our lives, to pursue our other dreams. Sometimes I start out by focusing on gratitude but then find myself down a rabbit hole where gratitude is muddied by things that ought not to be the way they are, where corporate greed impacts so much of our lives, and so on. I am working on finally building a meditation practice that will hopefully keep me away from rabbit holes for a few minutes every morning. Which is not to say that there are issues in this world that we should look away from. Gratitude for what we have should not blind us to what we need to bear witness to.

Still, it is a beautiful, cold morning here and I am lucky and grateful for it. Zero and I spent some time outside at sunrise, while the gibbous moon still shone above us. I feel as though I have more questions than answers at this point in my life and I am always looking for signs and guidance, am always wanting to know if I’m on the path I should be on. While standing out there in the cold at dawn, I stomped my slippered feet lightly on the worn pavers to stay warm, and Zero snuffled around in the frozen grass, and I lit a little candle and did my wishing. It reminded me of the kind of early morning where you might find a lamppost shining in the woods, as if we could be so lucky to find any kind of sign that was so obvious. It was a silly thing to want, yes, but it didn’t stop me from wanting it. If someone else said any of this to me, I would reassure them that the path they are on is the right one by virtue of them being on it. We will get to where we need to go, one way or another, and learn what we need to even if we veer in a direction that later seems “wrong.”

Photo by Boys in Bristol Photography on Pexels.com

Maybe one day I will accept my own answer, that it is okay to make wrong decisions, and it is more important that I am approaching life with curiosity and openness and love than it is to worry about doing something that might hurt me or cost me in some way later on, so much so that I stay frozen. This approach treats inaction as if it is some kind of protection. “Bad” choices and situations are going to happen, even when we’re trying to do everything right, because there is way too much we can’t control. I think once you go through a few such things and feel tired of the consequences, the hurt, you get to a place where you just don’t want to choose anything. It’s okay to move slowly, choose our next step with care but it is an illusion to think staying still makes us invisible to the world and to the challenges it wants to throw our way. Still, we are allowed to rest, and take our time.

Maybe too we can be lanterns for one another, glowing lampposts in the winter woods, helping if not to guide one another, at least to show each other that we’re not alone in our wandering.

Wishing you peace,

Cath

On Hope, Gratitude, and Purposeful Wandering

By Catherine DiMercurio

As Thanksgiving nears, it’s a good time to think about what we hunger for.

Gut Check on Purpose and Intentions

From the outset of this blog journey, I invited you to wander with me through love and life, heartbreaks and wholeness, and everything in between. In my first post, I described how, in the aftermath of my divorce, I found myself on a new, frightening, exhilarating path of singlehood—being a single parent and being a single person after twenty years of married partnership. In my first post I described how I met the man I was dating at the time. Not long after, I spoke about the end of that relationship.

Here we are now, more than five months after that ending. In the aftermath of the break up, I remembered the way I wondered how I might feel about it six months out. I wondered if I would feel bitter, or uneasy about dating again, or if I would have met someone else by then. I wondered if I would still feel open hearted.

In truth, nearly six months out, it’s a little bit of everything, but I find that, more than anything, I’m hopeful.

Fish and Feet and Hunger

It’s funny how things play out, how our hearts adapt and evolve, depending on what they have an appetite for. I think of prehistoric fish, and how the ones that loved being fish dove deep and explored the depths, and the others, either curious, or simply by virtue of finding themselves in proximity to land, explored the shallows. They sprouted limbs and feet, finding footing as amphibians. We are shaped by our appetites, our hunger. I have an appetite for hope, I suppose, and, finding myself a fish out of water in the world of singlehood, I hoped for solid footing, stretched my legs toward it.

foot stepson grey sands with waters nearing it
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I don’t have much of an appetite for bitterness, though those times come and go, ebbing and flowing like the tide. Sometimes I’m uneasy about the future. I do have a decent appetite for anxiety, in the way that we often get hungry for things that don’t serve our bodies well.

Thanks to a dear friend, I read an article recently that suggested our brains get a dopamine hit from worry, because it feels like we are at least doing something. I guess it’s like having a craving for potato chips. Sometimes you gorge yourself and sometimes you have a lot of will power and find a healthier snack, though it is probably smarter to not buy the chips at all. Too bad you can’t avoid having anxiety in your mental house the same way you can keep potato chips out of your home. You have to rely on will power to chose a healthier mental snack. You have to try feasting on gratitude instead. It all comes down to mindfulness, being able to call things what they are, and recognizing the timing, that things ebb and flow.

Speaking of Gratitude

I think gratitude is, in a way, the missing (or hidden) link, the one that yokes memory to hope. In a dark, underwater place, we can at least remember the sun, and in the remembering, swim a little closer to the surface, and near the surface, realize we still feel sun-warm when submerged. We can be grateful for the sun, grateful we remembered it, and grateful for our strength in kicking toward it.

And I think that’s where hope happens—in a heart that remembers that it has known love, or peace, or purpose—whatever your particular sun may be.

And One More Thing about Feet

There is a Pablo Neruda poem, “Your Feet,” which I adore. The final stanza reads:

But I love your feet

only because they walked

upon the earth and upon

the wind and upon the waters,

until they found me.

I love the sense of movement in this poem, the sense of purposeful wandering it conveys. I am not knowingly making my way toward someone, nor him to me, but wander we will—in all the ways that our lives, and the tides and the sun and the waves take us. Maybe at some point we will find that we are wandering side by side. Or maybe we won’t. But either way we can still move toward the sun.

Love, Cath