A New Leaf
I’m feeling really different these days. I don’t know, fresher somehow, lighter and with some sort of renewed purpose. I’m not ordinarily someone who sits around wondering why she’s here. I’m pretty directed that way, and endlessly curious. So I could pretty much go on learning for the remainder of my days.
But when I get in touch with my emotions, and the sensations I feel in my body and in the energy around me, it’s as if the universe is pushing me forward somehow, asking me to take a broader role in the world. Part of me knows what to do, what is being asked. Part of me doesn’t. So on most days I’m content to take one more step toward whatever.
But then I started thinking about trees, and how they lose their leaves once a year. Sure, the process is visible in fall, when the leaves are turning color and hitting the ground, but it must begin in summer. Just when the leaves are losing their very greenest color, and the air is getting hotter, the tree is agreeing to change. It’s setting forth a contract to do what it always does — move into the inevitable slowing down of autumn.
I feel like those leaves, making an agreement to move through the intense changes of spring and summer, so that things can slow down a bit in fall. I love that time of year, anyway. There’s something deeply reverent and still about it. And this fall, there’s something in me that says I’ll be in a far better and more enjoyable place, even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with right now.
