I listened to a podcast this week where the guest told of a story of a migrant whose clearest english-spoken line was “everything is always keeps changing”…
Turns out, He’s right.
Last year around this time, I wrote a poem about how life would continue on in all the small ways. In all the little ways that make up a life. I didn’t know what was to come then but… I also wasn’t wrong.
What I’ve found so curious over the last week of reflecting on this time last year is just how challenged I would be when the time came to return to “normal”.
He was right. Everything is always keeps changing.
It seems only when we seek to enforce stability, that we truly become stuck.
No matter how much we know better.
When things slowed right down last year, it was as if we all showed each other our values, like a hand of cards being revealed.
We seemed to speak more about our hearts than our plans.
But now? Now we are planning again. And in so many ways, that’s a god-send. But what of last year?
Last year, I walked for hours. I walked off versions of me, I set down loads I was carrying that I figured out weren’t mine, I created intentions. I valued the simple pleasures, rather than just talking about valuing the simple pleasures.
And, do you know what? I miss it.
I miss that time.
How on earth is that possible? I don’t miss the wakeful nights of worry about the world or the counting of cases. But I miss the pace we found.
The expectations seem to have returned. We’re back talking about our plans. Our busy-ness. Our rush before our realness. We don’t feel..collective, like we somehow did a year ago.
Things felt truly uncertain then but somehow the honesty of it all felt, true. Not trite.
Life is now, really, no less uncertain. And yet, we don’t talk about that like we did. We are supposed to be making up for lost time.
But I think I found time last year.
And I don’t want to lose what I found.
But everything is always keeps changing.