Sunday, November 27, 2011

The Climb

Things are...okay.  Fragile and tender.  What I have realized is that it's time to put my big girl panties on.  To take my big girl pill.  For the past 16 years, I've been trying to get by on auto-pilot, on good enough.  And good enough just ain't cuttin' it anymore.  This is the message I'm hearing recently, again and again.  It's time to grow up and beyond.

And part of me really doesn't want to.  This part of me is angry, stamping its feet, pouting, clinging desperately to the status quo.

But another part of me knows that if I keep going as I have, then I will lose things that are very important to me, that mean the world to me.  And no part of of me wants that to happen.

It's time to switch drivers, to start listening to other voices in my head, to push up and out, beyond this hard shell of lethargy, fear and vanity.  What's inside has beauty and shadow, blood and guts, blossoms and decay.  Part of this growth is accepting that I am a mixture of positive, negative and neutral, black, white and gray.  That the positive is not always positive, same with the negative and neutral - it's all in flux, needed at different times, for different occasions.  That just as the bad shall pass ("...and this too shall pass..."), so will the positive, that it all flows.  At this point, it's about averages, the middle ground, the balancing point.

At the start of my yoga class today, the teacher talked about how yoga (and, ostensibly life) is like climbing a mountain.  To get to the top, you have to make the climb, keep going, adjusting to altitude, building muscles, resting and acclimating.  If you try to fly to the top and then survive, you can't because you haven't prepared.  But if you make the climb, put in the work, the effort, the sacrifice and the strain, then you can reach the top, you can stay and survive.

I have a mountain to climb.  I have to stop trying to find my ride to the top.  It's time to put in the work.  It's time to endure the pain, remembering that is when strength is built. 

The dog days are over; the dog days are done.  Can you hear the horses?  'Cause here they come.

1 comment:

heathre said...

xoxoxo
great post. and i LOVE that song.