Thursday, May 5, 2011

Lost and Found

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

-Rumi

Reading Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, a true love story about a city woman who was swept off her feet by a cowboy, has made me yearn for a love story of my own. The want to feel wanted has all but consumed me and as I flirt and dabble in romantic affairs, I am struck with an old pang of insecurities I thought I had long laid to rest. My inner voice fossilizing the rock in my gut made of thoughts of inadequacies. The rock grows until it has consumed me, clouding my judgement and blocking my heart's light. I begin to feel bitter and melancholy and forget to acknowledge how blessed my life is.

I began reading The Essential Rumi the other day in the midst of a sulky fit about a failed social endeavor, and though it was written in the 13th century it felt as if he was speaking directly to me at that moment.

But listen to me: for one moment,
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you. God.

Tallulah. My family. My home. My opportunities. The sunrise. The birds. My pitfalls. My anger. My past. Myself. I am grateful for all of it. Though it may have taken me a long overdue crying fit to realize it, the life I live is simply superb, and I wouldn't trade it for any thing, any man. As I spent the first 21 years of my life trying to fit a circle into a square hole, this is my time to rest, to stop and smell the roses, to revel in the absolute beauty of my life at any given second.

I have found that efforts to find love are futile, but sit in gratitude for every inhale and exhale alike, and love will find you in the most unlikely places. So while I daydream about an indefinite someone with arms to hold me tight, I will use my own arms to work, and play, and snuggle my babe. I will throw them up in the air in joy for the uncertainty of what lay ahead, and an eagerness for each coming day. If there is one thing I have learned from walking in Mexico it is in order to remain balanced on the uneven surface of the cobblestones, the body must be absent of rigidity, and to allow for equanimity in life, rigidity must be dissolved from the mind and spirit.

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