Taking L’s this week.
Got in a fender bender with a 16 yr old in a BMW. Happened in a private parking lot and, as blame cannot be proven, we both walked away needing to cover our own repairs. Except I cannot cover repairs. I’m not in that income bracket at the moment. Heck, I’m trying desperately to get to the point where I can afford (and have the time to) change my oil. Add to that a deadline that is ringing loudly in my ears as I stare at an incomplete draft. I don’t know, but this week seems kinda odd.
I’m turning back, not to a particular blog, but a time frame where I was a little closer to having my stuff together. I was living in the big house in Maricopa, a suburb of Phoenix. half the week I had my kids and it was a rattling mess of a situation where I was struggling with being a single dad. Yet one day a week I had peace. I would read my Thich Nhat Hanh and fall into a rhythm of understanding–both of where I am in life and where I was trying to go. I have lost sight of that feeling because of the bustle, because of the mood of this new space and the emptiness of forward motion mixed in with an undeniable hurriedness at times.
“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves” Thich Nhat Hanh writes. Yet where are my pauses? I am forever rushing and forever holding on to things–like the fender bender last night. Such things plague my dreams, leading to situations that haunt me. Last night I dreamt of my birth father and we argued about my station and action in life and all of my failures and he tried to give me advice, but I cannot remember what he said–just the anger and opposition of the moment. Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.” I need to find that freedom and release, and I’ve struggled with this time and again. This is why I cast back to that time and those moments where I found a sense of peace and freedom. I long for that. I long for the patience I once revered.