It's been a hard couple of weeks. It never ceases to amaze me how, in a matter of hours, everything can change. I started this trip with a plan, an end goal, a partner. Now I'm not sure I'm still on a trip. I have to remember that I am young, that life is long, that hearts are resilient and that life has a way of sorting us all out. Someone I have an enormous amount of respect for told me recently that we make the decisions we mean to make, even if if we catch ourselves by surprise in the moment we make them. We just have to trust our instincts.
Yesterday was the first birthday I have ever spent in Chicago, despite living here for four years. It was a long, beautiful, hot day spent in the company of one of my favorite people and ending in the company of our closest friends. I tried to use the day counting my blessings. My plan is to stay here as long as I can stand it and try to absorb as much love and positive energy from my friends as possible before I head back to Lawrence. There I'll go back to the farm and try to take on the reality of a new life, a weary soul, and a lack of direction.
I know that this tetherless state is something I have ached for. I know that there are only brief moments in our lives when we have this opportunity and the trick is to see them as such. An opportunity to be young. Be one's own person. Live simply and fully in every moment. Ram Dass says :
"The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization."
"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed."
— Ram Dass
— Ram Dass
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