What Could Be

There is something about this time of year that just encourages reflection, our human rhythms following the same byways of nature with the days drawing in and the trees changing colour and shedding their leaves. I always feel called to down tools for a while to spend some quiet time with myself – renewing ideas, recharging my energy for what might lie ahead, considering the ‘what could be’ and how far away it still seems from the ‘what is.’

It always feels uncomfortable doing this, because it’s not something society encourages as a rule. It wants us continually nose-to-the-grindstone, doing and producing and consuming. Which tends to give the whole process an element of risk and leaves one with a vague feeling of guilt. But when I look back on my life I recognise that I’ve done this before – only then it was through times of illness, off sick with a bad cold or the flu usually. I’d need time in bed to recover, which would turn out to be just what I needed, giving me a chance to rebalance and recharge, an opportunity to step outside of the every day for a while. I was able to gain some distance and see things from another perspective; reflecting on a world that rarely seemed to have my best interests at heart. It was a quiet time that allowed me to consider other options and question the current thing I was doing, questioning whether it was right for me.

Looking back now, I can clearly see that it wasn’t. Otherwise, why would I have been ill? But all things have their purpose. And these days when I feel the call to stop for a while, I listen and surrender to the impulse. I still can’t claim to understand – my perspective is still limited within this great expanse of nature and the cosmos. But the difference between then and now is that I no longer need to be sick to justify it. And the contemplation feels different, as though I’m making a definite choice by not lying to myself, acting in my own best interests without the need to fit into any other agenda.

Life goes on all around me, but for the moment, I’ve stopped. This worries me far less than it used to, and even as my mind throws up the usual images of doubt and fear, I find I can ignore them. I know now that there is a reason for this stillness, which given enough time, will reveal itself. It always does.

The dancer
who moves the cosmos
moving me