Letting Things Unfold

Our rockery is thriving. 🩷

This week has been hectic. Yesterday evening, as Tim and I finished work and closed our laptops, we hatched a plan. He headed off to continue his steam loco testing in the workshop (after making modifications for many months), and I went outside to deadhead and weed in the fresh air. We would meet in the kitchen later for dinner.

Recently, it has been baking hot in the UK and humid, so fresh air has been in short supply, yet given all the trauma unfolding in the world, we feel bad if we complain.

Therein lies the rub.

In a pre-op appointment last week, my blood pressure was taken, and I was congratulated on how steady it was. Yesterday at my annual check-up with the Doctors, it wasn’t steady. The nurse took three readings to give me time to settle, and we chatted. I couldn’t pin down any one thing that was causing stress, and Tim and I nattered about it when I returned home.

It is the little things, and I have been letting the madness in. Soaking up angst from others and rising to situations (even in a small way) that would be best left to settle on their own. I had got caught up striving for balance, righting wrongs (in my view), pushing for answers, aiming to keep things simple, and getting caught. I was trying to fix, force, strive and mend, and all this was stemming from judgments I had made.

I had forgotten how to bear witness, observe and flow with love.

One story from this week sums up what many of us are struggling with.

I awoke at 1.30 am and became aware that a van engine was running and there was a rhythmic slamming of doors. Headlights were illuminating our bedroom, and I went to the window. On the corner opposite our house, a van was pulled up on the pavement. Behind the glare from his headlights, there was a man who had left his engine running with the driver’s door open. I thought he was a taxi at first. There was some kind of dance going on. He had the light turned on from his phone, and he was walking back and forth around his van. From one side door, to the back doors, then to the other side door. Each time he was opening the door, peering inside, and moving packages on the inner racking. Slamming the door, then moving on to open the next one. I was dausled from sleep, so it took me a while to realise he was looking for something. Each time, he checked the left side, then the back, then the right side, slamming the door before he moved on. The lights started to go on in the neighbours’ houses.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually, he located the parcel he was looking for and walked across to our neighbours and placed it in their porch storage box. Got back in his van, after slamming his driver’s door, turned his van around and left.

The next day, it dawned on me that he had lost the ability to think. He was clearly exhausted, and I could have taken him a cold drink and offered to help.

As the nurse and I sat quietly, waiting for my blood pressure to settle, I thought of the deliveryman and how each day there are many choices we make on how we react. What we choose to step towards and what we let settle. I have been pondering how I can return to the inner stillness within, in any given moment. To settle, instead of constantly driving forward. On how to juggle the madness out in the world and nurture the loving kindness we all need. Being constantly vigilant is exhausting, and sometimes sitting on the edge of a rockery, quietly deadheading in the evening’s hush, is all that’s needed. 🩷