Moody Monday
“I feel we are all islands in a common sea.”
“One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach---waiting for a gift from the sea.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
I woke up grumpy for no reason. Uninspired and irritable, I took almost an hour to find a quote I could relate to. These are from Lindbergh’s little classic, Gift from the Sea, first published in 1955. Every now and then, I read it again just to reconnect body and soul.
Waiting like an empty beach is harder for me than climbing Mt. Everest. I want to seize control and get moving. I want to ‘do something’ whether the something I do is right or not. If I were working with a counseling client, I would have them sit with the discomfort until it gave up its secrets—what is the cause; what’s down underneath the obvious that doesn’t want to be seen. Moods are almost always elusive. They grab us when we aren’t looking.
What usually works for me is distraction. When I work with my hands—housework, gardening, rearranging a room, cleaning out a closet—my mind gets freed up. Sometimes the demon of my nasty mood is exercised in the course of the work, and sometimes it pops up like a prairie dog out of its hole. I find myself saying, ‘ahh, so that’s how it is, huh.’
Moods are an uncomfortable part of life here in our common sea. We can ignore them and eventually they pass, or we can mine them for some jewels. Remember the legends of the leprechauns? They lived under roots of trees and in other hidey-holes and guarded stashes of gold. Moods are like leprechauns—one moment playful, the next hateful, but always in possession of some riches. It usually pays to do a bit o’ diggin’, lassie.
In the spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment