The Practical Free Spirit

Things are going really well.

But Amy, didn’t you write last week about how you have a sprained toe?

Well, yes. I still have a sprained toe. That is not so great. It hurts. It is hard for me to get places. I can’t dance, which is awful. Nala’s routine is screwed up, so she’s having some trouble.

But.

Even the sprained toe is going really well. Not because it’s healing miraculously fast (I mean, I think it’s healing, but it’s slow going), but because of everything around the toe. Because the support system…it’s actually working. Blow me over with a feather.

People are feeding me. I love being fed even when nothing is wrong. But when something is wrong, and I’m tired and in pain and getting restless from sitting around all the time, it’s even better. And people have been visiting me. And checking in with me to see how I’m doing. And offering to help. And keeping me entertained.

And meanwhile they are giving me this opportunity to deepen our friendships.

It is so much easier to remain cheerful when you are getting what you need.

The support network is working exactly the way I supposed it might, too, which is to say, unpredictably. And that is lovely, and sometimes surprising in the best possible way. I’m getting to see my friends shine, and that makes me happy for both them and myself. Meanwhile, I’m not having to tap out any one person.

There are so many interesting aspects to living through big change. I’ve talked about the relief and the gratitude. I’ve talked about the testing, about the developing mindfulness, and the backward slides.

And now, here when everything is going well, there is also this: fear.

One night last week, I began to cry because everything was going so well, and things were continuing to improve, and it felt weird, and what if it all went away again? Because I like all the changes. I want to keep them.

I’m pretty sure the Buddhists would call this attachment.

I think that’s why it can be so difficult to change the status quo: it has a hard reality that all other possibilities lack. We know the status quo; we have come to trust it. Even if it sucks.

Whereas when we’re dealing with change, we’re exploring. We don’t know what we’ll find. We don’t know what will happen. We are steeped in uncertainty. And it can feel unreal, like a carriage that will melt back into a pumpkin at midnight.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t real, of course. It merely means we need to become better acquainted, perhaps even intimate enough that we create a new status quo.

This fear of mine, it’s definitely from the old status quo. It comes from decades of shoes raining from the sky. Enough shoes fall on your head and you become trained to expect them. And thinking about shoes falling on your head is scary.

But maybe in my new status quo, there are no shoes. Maybe we can all go barefoot instead.

And meanwhile, while I look up at the sky watching for shoes…things are still going really well.

Barefoot! (And ready to dance.)