The Fractured Ribcage of a Tree
As a mother whose children have now all entered school and is not accustomed to the days being my own, I have found myself greedy for all of the minutes. I find that I tend to over-schedule and pack my days with the liberties I have not known in the dry season of raising small children.
What I have found though as a deeply practical person, is that practicality can often remove us from the tender moments that we are currently in. We can negate our own wellbeing for the sake of efficiency. And no matter what gets accomplished in a day, it is easy to feel defeated when we compare it to the unending list of all that still needs done.
It’s embarrassing to admit, but I felt on the verge of tears in the parking lot of my children’s school as I dropped them in time for the morning bell. Like a newscaster’s crawl bar, my mind was scrolling the endless and greedy list of what needed tended, maneuvering tactics to get ahead, and the guilty tension of what it would cost to do nothing at all. In a moment of inspiration, it occurred to me that I shouldn’t ask what needs done, because we all know that gives an answer that devours our lives. Instead, I quieted myself and asked not how to utilize my day as if it were a tool, but how I could honor my life as a person.
It became abundantly clear that I needed a day of nourishment; a slow day where I could sit on my front porch with a good novel, where I could walk the foot-warn path in the woods. Where I could breathe easy and the birds weren’t over-talked, but deeply listened to. Where I could be unhurried and let myself be completely oblivious to the next thing. As I drew a deep breath, I realized that this is what life is supposed to be - not to consume the minutes, but to stop and allow yourself to be consumed. To be brought alive by an attachment to each moment, to complete each task with the mind connected to it, and to grow and find redemption through every hard day.
The minutes of our lives are too precious to be burned through with efficacy. The days are meant to connect us to the breath in our lungs. To stop and observe the felled oak filled with the detritus of fall and the vibrancy of the green moss crawling from the fractured ribcage of the tree. I, too, wanted to be split open and spilled out, a fertile land for life to continue growing long after I have passed.