boxcars and baobab trees

Exactly a month ago I was just getting home for the first time in since moving to Colorado.  I had no idea what the break was going to bring, but had no idea the extent of what would come my way.  Lots of questions, lots of clarity.  It always amazes me how the two come in pairs.  Chaos and confusion, frustration and uncomfortable situations, and still, there arises out of it all clarity, heart-felt moments of connection, times of deep joy.  What do I look for?  How do I make sense of what lies before me, even as I ponder what I left behind?  If you’ve spent much time with me, you probably know I like to over-think things.  I look for questions.  I look for other ways of looking at things, and yet I often find myself stuck on one train of thought, going forever in one direction, forgetting that there’s more than one destination to arrive at. 

I have more options than one or the other, stay on or get off.  It’s terrifying to even think of leaving the security, but there’s so much more out there!  And yet, isn’t that part of what’s keeping me inside?  It’s terrifying.  There’s so much out there.  I’m safe here, the inside of this train car may not be the most comfortable, or the nicest, or even have what I want on board, but at least I know what’s here.  I know what to expect, how to make sense of things.  I can look out the window and admire the passing scenery from the comfort of my recliner, question what is happening outside the window, wonder at the coolness of the stream, the warmth of the rocks, and never have to leave.  In this safety, I like to question the world. 

College for me was one giant boxcar.  It was one of the safest places I ever could imagine myself living.  Don’t get me wrong, it challenged my assumptions of the world, it challenged my assumptions of myself, it made me question almost everything I had previously been taught to believe about the way the world works, yet I still lived in a bubble.  On a few occasions, I threw myself off the train.  Once I ended up in rural West Africa.  I was miserable, but I knew I was suffocating and I needed some air.  And still, I was so terrified of what I found, I happily went back to my boxcar afterward to “process.”  I needed the safety, the comfort, the support of everyone and everything I knew before if I was really to make sense of what lay outside.  The river was cool, but it was full of garbage and dead fish; the rocks that made up the road were warm, too warm, and I, unlike so many others, was wearing shoes.  It was everything I expected, yes, and everything I was afraid it would be. 

I needed the boxcar that was my carefully constructed life in college to help keep me from losing my mind.  If you’ve been lucky enough to go abroad, you know the feeling of returning home.  It’s a joyous celebration to be back where life again follows a course of action where you know the rules, know how to sit and when to talk, know which words to use to convey what it is that’s in your head, your heart, no longer have to defend every move you make (to yourself or to others). 

After all of this, my boxcar was a welcome retreat from being bombarded for months with all things strange, and wonderful.  And yet, it was there, underneath the foliage of a 500-year-old baobab tree, that I first realized, there is always good in the bad.  There is always source of joy and beauty in the chaos, the frustration, the confusion. 

I find myself coming back to this moment often.  It’s not a comfortable place to be, even after all this time.  Recognizing that there is meaning in the chaos, beauty in every unpleasant moment, joy in moments where grey skies seem to blanket the world in sorrow.  There is always one in the other.  On days when chaos and confusion and sorrow abound, this is a comforting thought.  It helps me look for the ray of sunlight, to hold onto hope that it exists, even if I can’t see it in this very moment.  It’s a happy thought, knowing that if I can find a different way of looking at things, I’ll be able to see the joy, see the meaning, see the beauty I know I’m missing. 

I climbed a mountain yesterday; elevation change of 2,500 feet in 3.5 miles.  It was hard when I climbed it in September, maybe it should have been easier now that my body and lungs have adjusted to living at altitude, but when you’re walking on snow, it doesn’t really matter how well prepared you are.  The trail was never not covered in snow, and where it hadn’t mostly turned to ice, you’d have to watch your step so that your foot didn’t fall 10-20inches deep in snow.  We slid all the way up the mountain, and all the way back down.  Today, my body feels like I got hit by a train.  I wish you could have seen the view from the top, though.  It’s something I will always remember.  Even as I forget how cold I was sitting at the top with the wind whistling all around us, how my legs ached with every slippery step, I will remember the majesty of looking at the world from way up high.  There was nothing to obscure the view of Mount Meeker and Long’s Peak; there they stood in all their glory, with only the wind and the sunshine between us.  I wanted to stay there forever.  Because even though I was freezing, I was hungry, I was in physical pain, there was such joy both surrounding me and within me.  In the midst of all of the bad things, there it was, a glimpse of delight, of deep satisfaction.  Times like this, it’s easy to recognize and fall in love with those few good things because they’re literally right in front of you. 

When everything is good though, when life is the best it’s ever been, it’s harder to accept that there’s good in the bad, because it means that there’s also not-so-good floating around, too.  And that’s hard.  Acknowledging that even though I wouldn’t trade this life I’m living for anything in the world, I still get homesick on occasion.  I still miss aspects of the life I left in Ohio.  I still have bad days occasionally, I get grumpy even as my friends try to cheer me up and lavish me with love.  It’s almost harder to acknowledge those bad feelings when everything else is going right.  I want to just see the good things; I want the love that surrounds me to always be enough.  And yet, it isn’t always.  I miss morning coffee in college, “quiet time” that ended up not-so-quiet because we found we could share what was once only allowed in our journals to be shared aloud; I miss the chaos of the camp dining hall filled with 200+ smiling faces and the anticipation of what’s to come; I miss short naps on the couch and going out with friends ready to dance the night away; I miss waking up early every Sunday, regardless of what happened Saturday night, because smiles and love (and breakfast) were waiting.

I don’t like this uncomfortable longing that I feel in the pit of my stomach.  I want this feeling to go away.  I want to not miss all this, I want to not long for the good things I left behind; it makes my heart hurt.  I know I don’t want to go back, I know I don’t want to give up any part of the life I now lead.  I’m happy, life is really really good, and still the feelings arise, and I can’t will them to go away. 

I can’t will this longing in the pit of my stomach away, and it transports me back to the baobab tree.  It transports me back to the time when I stood absolutely mystified at how life could be so hard and so beautiful at the same time.  It’s been a while since I’ve thought of this tree.  I hope it’s still standing, hope that it’s still a part of this strange and beautiful world.  I hope it’s still offering its wisdom, I hope people are still listening.  I don’t like this feeling in my heart that comes from missing a life I once lived, but I’m so happy for all that has been, both good and bad, that has brought me to this point.  It is because of the hard days that I try to forget and because of the love that I miss, that I’m able to be who I am today.  I wouldn’t trade that for the world. 

And as uncomfortable as the feeling of missing things is, it reminds me to reach out.  It reminds me to write, to make a phone call, to send my love to those who have loved me so hard, and still do.  This living in the moment, being here now, it’s important.  It reminds me of all that I love about where I am.  It’s also important, even though it’s uncomfortable, to remember all of what was, the good in the bad and the bad in the good, that brought me to now.  Some sort of wholeness exists, between the past and the present and the future; it fills in the cracks of time, of space, of my own thoughts and feelings.  It’s a hard place to be, loving even the uncomfortable, thankful for the longing that makes me remember, but it’s here.  I’m here.  To deny it won’t do any good, and to forget what got me here, I wouldn’t want either. 

I’m learning not to be afraid, of what lies inside my heart and of what lies outside my boxcar.  I’m learning not to be afraid of taking the risk that it just might be better than what I have currently surrounded myself with.  It makes me anxious.  I don’t know what to expect, and I’ll probably end up missing what I have now.  Love it all, now, while I have it.  There will always be more out there, and there will always be something I long for from the past; that’s what makes me human.  That’s what makes me alive.  So here’s to missing the past- for it makes me remember all the love; here’s to embracing all that is now- the confusion and the joy; and here’s to what’s to come, whatever it may be, that I have the courage to find out.

            

me, right now

I’ve been away for quite some time, now.  It’s not from lack of opportunity, or lack of things to write about, but sometimes when there’s so much happening, so much I want to write about, I can’t seem to find the right words.  It all mixes together, and instead of meaningful thoughts and understandings, it all seems to come out sounding like white noise, just there, but not creating anything worth listening to.  I sat down to write on multiple occasions, but what resulted felt fake; like someone hijacked my heart, took everything inside of it, and forced it into a grey mass, like what you see on the side of the road days after it snows but nothing has melted.  Exhaust has turned what was once a beautiful, white blanket of snow into a gross mess of sludge. 

Maybe my own exhaustion turned what was in my heart to sludge.  There’s been so much to do!  The holiday season comes with so much- saying good-bye to some friends, traveling across the country, re-connecting with family and friends from home, and that’s not even including the holiday part, going shopping, cleaning the house, cooking for hours and hours, being social, and trying to answer the questions “how are you?” and “how’s Colorado?” and “what are you doing out there?” with honesty and respect and a single sentence.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s been an absolutely amazing month- I wouldn’t trade a day of it for anything- but I’m really really happy being back, here at the coffee shop, the mountains in front of me and behind me, hot coffee in hand, sitting down to write with a full heart.

Many of you know, and for those of you who don’t, these past two weeks of work at the Ranch have been staff training.  We don’t get our next group of students until Tuesday the 19^th, and as such, the Ranch has been really empty feeling lately.  Many of you who are teachers will understand the feeling of anticipation, an empty classroom waiting for the arrival of students to fill the chairs with their bodies and the air with their laughter.  I love this.  I love helping create a space that will soon be filled with smiles and laughter, and so much potential that you can almost see it in the air.  The other side of this, though, is the emptiness that sometimes we create, in anticipation for something better to fill it.  I’ve lived my life like this for some time now, always chasing the next adventure, absolutely certain that somewhere, anywhere, the grass really would be greener than what is here now.  It’s exhausting, this type of living. 

Maybe it is my own exhaustion that turns what’s in my heart to sludge; that blurs the colors and makes everything look grey.  Everything here, that is.  Everything across the ocean, across the country, even across the room sometimes, what’s over there remains vibrant. 

Until recently. 

Last week, I had my mid-term review with my supervisors.  It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been here for half of my contract, but that’s a tangent for another day.  Something the ranch manager said during this has stuck with me, and I haven’t been able to shake it.  We were talking about my goals for these next four months, and I was talking about improving my confidence while speaking in front of big groups.  It’s something I’ve been working on for a while.  It makes me so anxious to stand in front of a group and present anything.  I doubt what I’m saying, I doubt my ability to communicate clearly, I doubt if what I have to say is really worth listening to.  I was rambling about having the confidence to speak as if I believed that my voice mattered, and my manager interrupts me.  “So do you just not see it?”  It almost knocked the wind out of me.  Do you just not see it?  Do you not see that you do speak with confidence, you do communicate clearly, you do have something worth listening to? 

I didn’t.  I still don’t know if I truly believe it, but his words aren’t going away, and there’s a reason they’re sticking around. 

I wrote a poem the other day called “longing,” and I’d like to share some it here.

Longing:

            To create… out of my whole being;

To see… the world as already complete, to take the pieces and not be afraid to re-arrange;

To risk… because it is the only way I’ll ever know: the grass isn’t greener on the other side- Surprise! Snow isn’t green;

To act… out of the core of my being; not afraid of my body, not afraid of my mind.  I tell myself these mantras constantly, you’d think by now I’d learn their truth;

To embrace… why I’m afraid of my body, why I’m afraid of my mind, why I’m afraid of the world more often than not.  I’m so afraid of the person I don’t want to be I can hardly see how the person I am now is who I want to be. 

To believe… the person I am now is who I want to be.

I’ve spent a long time being unhappy with myself.  I think part of it comes from the constant drive to be better, and to emulate the best characteristics of all of the people around me.  It’s not bad to want to be better, but it has blinded me, on many levels, to the beauty that is what I already have, who I already am. 

I love who I am.  I love my life.  I love that I get to live and work in an amazing place with amazing people.  I’m so blessed for all of you, my family and friends all over the world who choose to follow my blog, who believed before I did, that I really do have something to say, something worth listening to, worth reading about.  I’m finally beginning to see it.  Thanks for listening, for reading; for lighting candles of creativity, compassion, passion, and love deep within my soul even before I was able to really see it. 

Some days I’m still doubtful, but I’m beginning to believe, more and more every day, that this person I already am, right here, right now, is already all of the things I’m longing for.  It’s a great place to be.