I think about the world we live in and about life–everything I’ve lived and witnessed. I become keenly aware of my own mortality and the mortality of those closest to me, followed by a sense of how simultaneously meaningful and meaningless it all is.
How transient relationships are, and how precarious life itself can be.
I feel duality in my body all at once–extremes of sadness and elation, satisfaction and craving–and come to know my depth.
It is a depth not understood by many. Those who understand it have their own translation of its experience, and some may not even have language for it. But attempting to explain it diminishes its significance. It is akin to a poorly translated poem or a song performed off key.
I am learning to let go of this need for people to understand, or approve of the fact that I feel safest by myself because this type of emotional depth leaves you open to what others bring in a profound way. If someone drops a coin into a shallow fountain it can easily be retrieved, but not so if it falls into a well.
This type of depth and sensitivity demands heightened responsibility for our perceptions. There is a tendency to project an insecurity onto someone else and call it a “bad vibe;” to fear abandonment and perceive a person not texting back quickly enough as proof they’d leave and permission to shut down emotionally. We cut others off at the sign of any discomfort rather than search within to find the root. But see, the more depth one has, the harder it is to find that root. Searching the bottom of a shallow fountain or pool? Easy enough. Digging up projections from the bottom of a well? Not so much.
But this type of work is necessary for all of us regardless of our emotional capacity, and for me it demands silence so that I can discern the voice of my triggers from the voice of intuition.
Because I’m sensitive.
I feel people without hearing them. So when they speak and their words contradict their energy, I feel that split as if I’m being sliced apart.
I like spending time with people who are quiet on the inside. There’s no grasping or clawing at you from inside them. They feel like peace. Their energy is still, even if their emotions are not. Like the ocean roiling with rage, there’s a stillness underneath the surface; a knowing, perhaps, that the waves always return to. It is beautiful.
I love spending time by the ocean and among trees and in sunshine, because nature doesn’t speak but you can feel its song. A steady rhythm of creation, pulsing, reassuring…
I feel lonely around most people, but not in nature. In nature I’m in the presence of a true friend.
I feel its stillness and wisdom and know I’m loved.
I sit in the shade of a tree and know my worthiness.
I say nothing yet feel and know my connection to it; know I’m understood by it.
And how could it not understand when the Earth holds the history of all of humanity, and the memory of its birth and evolution within it?
It has tasted blood and piss and shit; housed the dead; felt the agony of being scorched and cut down.
The Earth, the ocean, the sun… transmutes it all.
It embraces the dead and breeds life.
The sun rises every day; a new moment emerges, along with new hope and possibility regardless of the severity of yesterday’s storms.
There is no greater teacher, no wiser guru.
Nature is the true Master.
I imagine myself lying in the woods or on a beach, my body dissolving into soil or sand, and in that feeling of melting into nothingness I sense my wholeness.
I love the feeling of the sun shining down on my back; love to feel its warmth radiate throughout my body. Sunlight re-energizes me.
Sometimes, depression visits like an estranged friend; a relationship I’ve outgrown but can still appreciate for its former significance.
Moments of despondency pass like tropical storm clouds and the sun shines again.
Nature teaches me the transience of all things; teaches me to surrender to cycles of joy and pain.
I’ve learned to honor the changing seasons inside of me.
Pain points to all I need to unlearn so that I can see the world anew.
So that I can see myself as I truly am.
Joy reminds me worthiness does not need to be earned.
Nature shows me to be still through it all.
