Welcome to a hit of hope.
I was recently traveling for five weeks and while I was gone I asked a neighbor to grab my mail and take care of my plants.
One day my neighbor texted me to let me know he'd knocked over one of my plants while vacuuming.
Everything,
He said,
Had come tumbling out,
Uprooted.
He was deeply apologetic and I immediately texted back,
No worries.
Then I added that maybe my plant had chosen my same mantra for 2025.
Don't live the same year.
Maybe my plant was ready to get knocked out of its comfortable,
Safe space to see what new ways it might live.
When I arrived home my neighbor gave me my mail and my plants back and yeah,
The one that had been knocked over looked battered.
Kind of like it had been in a bar fight with a saguaro cactus and a pineapple.
That night I couldn't sleep because one of the places I'd traveled to was Japan for eight days and I awoke at one in the morning because of jet lag.
I turned on the light and contemplated my plant.
With all the travel I'd been doing,
First in the desert,
Then Japan for a little more than a week,
My body,
Like that plant,
Had been whacked out of its normal ways of being.
I went from bracing myself against the cold winter days to hiking in shorts in the desert.
I no longer had to worry about scraping my windshield.
Instead I got to hike gorgeous trails and touch the beautiful stones that sang their red songs to me.
I could literally feel my body and spirit powering back up.
And then there's Japan.
It's difficult to explain just how different it is.
Not only the hours when my body was supposed to be awake,
But the food,
The crowds,
The language spoken and unspoken.
When my body is in Japan,
It is on high alert,
Trying to make sense of things that don't often make sense to me.
As I looked at my plant in the middle of the night,
I realized something I've known for a while now.
Life often doesn't make sense and it will knock us about.
We can be uprooted from what we know and love in an instant,
Which means it's not always a question of if life will not make sense or knock us about.
It's more a question of when and how and most importantly what we will do next.
As I contemplated my plant,
I remembered another mantra that helped me through my darkest hours.
It's all about the repair.
One of the best ways forward,
No matter what has happened to us,
Is gentle,
Tenacious care.
A tender presence that will be there no matter what.
A brave presence that takes the time to root into the present just as it is and see what's good.
See what's possible.
Where we might find connection and hope and how we might turn toward new life and light.
Be well.
