Putting the first thing first that I said I would in the last blog—making choices of a healing nature—has led to my needing to decide that this blog will come out bi-weekly, or twice a month, depending on the number of weeks in the month. As one who enjoys reading and writing poetry, I must say that the sound of “bi-weekly blog” appeals more to me than a weekly one. And so it shall be. Less can be more. And enough is enough.
Enough being enough. Another word for that might be contentment. That’s not something we hear much about these days. But it is something I want to encourage in myself—a contented spirit. I don’t equate that word with dispassion or apathy. I can care and be contended. Contentment sits close beside peace and gratitude on a park bench. Restful.
Things I want these days as summer fades into autumn. Sitting in peace and gratitude. Rest.
In contentment I can remain here and now without demanding the next moment please me more than this one does. Am I expecting the impossible by calling myself into contentment, or just doing what would come naturally in an environment that didn’t always want me to buy and sell?
I think of Wordsworth words at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th. “Buying and selling we lay waste our powers. So little we see in nature that is ours/a sordid boon.”
Can progress go on if all of us in this country/world seek to be content? Or would the whole thing collapse? Or maybe contentment and peace are the progress we seek, and all we have to do is choose them. Here. Now.
Is that too simple?
Or is it the simplicity on the other side of complexity?
Just a few wonderings this week. I will be spending the next two weeks in reconnecting with old friends and siblings in some lovely natural settings, in conversation, sharing life in the physical—not online. I must admit despite my blogging (which is because I love to write and want to reach out to interested readers) that I have more of hankering these days for the in-person kind of connections.
What about you? Is online enough? How do we learn to reconnect above ground, out in the air, under the trees? How can online connecting help foster the in-person kind. How can they be mutually supportive rather than exclusive?
There was a story I remember teaching years ago in my high-school English educator life by E.M. Forster called The Machine Stops. It did, and everyone—who had grown overweight and weakened from sitting in front of a machinein the dark –had to come up out from underground and re-acclimate to the air and to the sun–to real life. It was written in the 1930s. And here we are now.
Is it time to say enough is enough, and take a break from these computers. Go outside—and play, until the streetlights go off…
I certainly more questions than answers this week, I see. Maybe some of you have answers—at least tentative ones?
See you in a couple of weeks, when I come back inside.~ Eileen
