Getting in bed for the night, I notice the pattern my book light makes on the wall. It reminds me of light broken, rippling and refracted, reflecting in a pool of water, a puddle, a lake, the river, the ocean.
Yesterday, I worked on cataloging my journals from the past ten years (a project I’d started earlier but never finished), putting book plates with date ranges in the covers, reading various passages, and stacking and organizing them by date. I showed Eric, noting how interesting it was that the piles from the last few years got increasingly taller, and how many of the ones from 2001-2009 weren’t completely full, still had empty, blank pages. He said it looked like a bar graph.
What I noticed most–besides how much more I am writing now, after struggling with writer’s block for decades–is something I notice when I reread posts from this blog: my struggles don’t really change that much over time, and even as I struggle, there is so much wisdom there. I like to imagine the real change, the one the “bar graph” illustrates, is the increase in compassion I’ve applied to the process. What I’d like to think is that the real change is I am kinder to myself, more present and a better friend. This isn’t just a small stone, it’s more like a whole river bed of rocks.
TL;DR: I catalog my journals from the past ten years and notice that while I still struggle with many of the same things, I have wisdom, I am kinder, and I am writing more and more.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 