Patience and Perspective

The gap between my dreams/plans for the future and present reality opened up this week,  with more obstacles and delays on seemingly every front.  Time has decided to trip me up between the extremes of its daily rush through hours flying like hummingbirds and the perpetual pause which has caused us all to hold our collective breath...for what, we don't exactly know.  As long as my ego can detach itself from its own insistence of what should be,  I can take in stride the stops and starts which are lurching me through this summer.

Global weather systems have conspired to keep us in a wet cycle,  although mornings are sometimes free of rain before storms build up again through the heat of the day.   Yesterday I caught a dry window,  as storms had come through the prior night, lifting the heaviness from the air and giving me cooler conditions for a long run.  Sans hydo belt and everything  else but music,  I walked out the door and headed south to pick up a western loop,  feeling the mental fog of a busy week,  and so many clients who are working hard to keep their own footing, even as I work to keep mine.   Therapists are not super-people.   We are wounded healers for the most part,  whose own issues propelled us into the healing arts.   We are confident enough about our own insight and management of our problems to feel we can be useful to others.  And as many therapists would agree,  we are often just as tired, frustrated, overwhelmed and burdened by the demands of life.  You only have to read through any of my earlier years here on the blog to know some of what I've gone through. 

What we find, if we are obliged at all to our professions,  is a commitment to using the very same tools we encourage in others.  Willingness, above all,  to dive into the source of the stress,  and balance any conditions within our control, adapting, adjusting as we go, is always a key for me.   In the run,  whatever expectations I have dissipate in my warm-up;  once I get a few miles in,  I am now squarely focused into the attention it takes to manage the initial aches and pains,  the pace,  the intensity I decide to take on, while scoping out miles, pit-stops, water and bathroom breaks.   Everything about the run is like dress rehearsal for Life.   It's challenges, disappointments, and yes, triumphs when I find myself, like I did yesterday, farther along without a break,  better able to sustain the gait,  coming into the last stretch still running, less walking than I've had in a while.

I took my time,  I soaked up plenty of beautiful Mother Nature at tiny Anderson, then again at John Williams parks.   After I got home,  I zapped through the chores while unplugging from the outside world and rested with journal and oil pastels at hand.  I know loved ones and friends wonder why I am not more available to them sometimes;  but I also know they understand,  those who 'get' me, that time in solitude is very important to me.   And in the solace of Nature,  and my own space and thoughts,  a necessary peace is found.  Patience serves me on the run;  perspective comes once we step back and survey our progress on the Path, so far.