Maybe that view is limiting.
Maybe instead there was the time I was young and hurting, and then the world was full of opportunity and I was youthful and dangerous. There was a time of sickness with a disease in my arm. There was a time of love and being slippery on the floor of the shower. There was a time of fear and newness, of becoming something bigger. There was a time where all the world disappeared and all I could see was a little baby face with the most promising brown eyes. There was the time I was writing a book, a time when I felt so empty, everything was gray.
Time is only getting older, and managing transitions.
Kurt was telling me how Neitzsche said something about war. War is a time of transition, and transitions always feel bad.
I've been thinking about being comfortable, how when it's winter and everything is dead, I fold inward and seek comfort. I say to myself, "This feels bad, and so I need to do things to please myself, like sleeping in late and taking a bath. Like baking bread and wearing my blue fuzzy bathrobe. Like closing down and burying my head under my wing. Elle at Mistakes and Milkshakes was talking about this the other day.
When I find myself seeking comfort and sinking lower into the feather down of my life, what I really need is to shake things up. I need to find ways to make myself decidedly UNcomfortable. I need to bear the cold. I need to move. I need to get mad. I have some ideas. I'll share them later.
Mostly, I need to let time do it's job. I need to not pad myself against transition. I need to welcome the ways I am changing, the ways my children are changing and the way our life together doesn't ever hold still. I need for time to mean that we're getting better, while we're getting older. I want to work WITH time, not to let it take advantage of me.
Letting time go by is so passive. It's so comfortable.
I want to be an active companion of time. I want to get better.
Kurt with Louise at the zoo, 2012
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Today's post is a link up with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary's Just Write. If you want to join in, write something about the details of your day and link up! Be sure to read a few other pieces and get to know some great new writers in the process.
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I don't think transition is always bad. It's different and new, but not necessarily bad. I'm still transitioning from married to single life and I couldn't be happier!
ReplyDeleteI totally get it.
ReplyDeleteAgain.
This post is yet another gift to me. Thank you.
I love this line: "Time is only getting older, and managing transitions."
ReplyDeleteFor me, I feel like I'm still sort of pre-transition, maybe. Or pre-pre-transition. That's why I'm so comfortable. A lot of things got settled for me in the last couple of years, and while I spent some time enjoying that -- now the question is "What next?" Is it all just jogging pants and naps from here on?
I wrote something similar-ish on my blog last year. Something about the "if you're in hell, keep going" theory. I do it, too. I surround myself with comfort, give myself breaks, cut myself some slack. And then, like a junkie, I need more of it.
ReplyDeleteI love the pics.
Wonderful post!!! It can be easy to get into a routine and hide from the world sometimes. As someone who is incredibly shy, I find it all too easy to slip into my own world. Only when I shake things up and make myself step out of my comfort zone do i realize how this affects me.
ReplyDeleteI found your blog through the blogger comment club. Thanks for letting me visit!