Canyons of the Mind
January 29, 2011Every so often as she helped me wage war on stiffness my physical therapist would look at me and say “breathe”. The more a stretch hurt the more I locked my muscles down like boats in a storm. I braced so hard for impact that I completely forgot to come up for air.
Breathe, said th evoice in my head today. Breathe. So that’s what I’ve been forgetting to do lately. Deja vu all over again. I get swamped and I zero in, determined to slog through. Too bad, because if I had shifted my gaze beyond the next two feet of mud I might have seen the raft going by. A helpful nudge from the universe was sitting right there hollering and waving at me.
Single-minded focus is a flawed and exhausting defense mechanism. The snow crowds the roads and makes ski slopes of sidewalks. Why let idle thoughts scrape the rafters of my mind?
I don’t know how to do things with quiet purpose. I’m either unmoved or enchanted, paused or running wild. Maybe if I listen to this long enough it will clear some space in my head.
