“I found an easier way to be.”
I copied this line onto a yellow sticky pad weeks ago and finally tore it off the page, managing it into a slender strip. Now the quote lives inside my cellphone cover where dollar bills spend time, waiting. During one of my financial withdrawals I re-read this and remembered how it calmed me. The simple elegance, lack of elaboration, the self-awareness.
But now I can’t remember who made this their comforting cornerstone. Or why. Maybe it will come to me – maybe not.
I do know what it means to me. It confirms a desirable truth and challenges my restless self. And what was ‘found’ is of great worth – ‘an easier way to be.’ Pretty wonderful. Easier, not better, but the better-ness is implied. The often-dissatisfied mindset is allowed to pause. Many of those sticky demands, barnacles slowing the voyage, are sloughed away.
Not to become, but to be. (No, not going to quote Hamlet here.) An easier way to be varies for each of us. And yes, it may be abhorrent to some. But knowing that someone out there chose this as their truth means it’s possible for me, too. Possible and satisfying.
At some point in our life we need to proclaim freedom from the intricacies of needless wanting. Just to hope for an easier way to be is a beginning. A road to walk clear of restless fussing or the wanting to fuss. Clearing out the stickiness.
And hopefully before life abandons us. What I mean by ‘life’ here is the inner drive that propels us hither and yon. Sometimes it feels that we’ve run aground; our boat scraps the shore’s coral footing. We’re moored and stuck. We may feel secluded and at peace – or simply stuck and lost. But we can always declutter, redefine ourselves. Find our way again.
I’m remembering a story of a baby girl placed in the shade of a tree. The parents watched her, delighted, as she kept reaching for something just outside her grasp. Her fingers wiggled to touch.
We reach out to grasp, we grasp to touch, we touch to feel, we feel to connect with all around us. And the all around us, we may realize, or not, is always there. Waiting for us.
Kevin took this at my request. It was posted in the window of the Gutter Book Shop in Dublin. Love Oscar Wilde but wasn’t familiar with this quote. Again, it feels like a pronouncement of someone who knows self-acceptance – that portable, inner acceptance.
* * *
This is how the above meanderings translate into ‘poetry form’ –
Our Glimmering Selves
Pervading the space between the stars
like a space lingering between us
streams our silent, glimmering selves.
Awake, we orbit in a galaxy of possibility –
retrieval trembles through every pore,
a slurry of outcomes glistens with relief.
If by slipping, our heart stumbles
and the grasp falls from our reach
we exhale desire but not relief.
Adrift through this measureless oasis
in a state of complicated grief
from so much wanting betrayed.
Astonishment stares back at us,
days move through in their shy increments,
months cluster around all that we love,
Years revive every respiration we offer to the world
and carefully sighs
to begin, to love, again.