The best signs are to be found guess where. Yes, the Philippines.
What do you do when life throws you that curve ball? When the day to day activities and pleasures that make up a life are suddenly out of reach and a new path needs to be found and navigated? Nothing for it but to try to cultivate a practice of patience, something I have been finding is not an easy thing to do.
Two weeks ago I was at the Saturday market and had a serious mis-step. Literally. Distracted by something or other (pea shoots, I think), I stepped off a curb I didn’t see and fell. Badly. One minute I was on one path, and the next I was – whoosh – on the ground looking up at a number of concerned citizens hovering over me. Everything changed. In an instant.
I took out my left foot, right knee and left wrist. No bones broken but bad sprains all round. Grounded. I was already in a bit of a state because of a still undiagnosed chronic pain in the upper left abdomen (my doctor has told me straight out he has no idea what’s wrong with me). But now I could barely stand up, let alone walk, and with only one functioning limb, took to the couch where I’ve been more or less ever since.
Abandoned were a half finished canvas on the easel, the drawing board, the photo processing, the photobook on Asia that’s underway, the incomplete redecoration of one of the main house’s rooms, the pilates, the beach and forest walks, the every second day evening meal making, the gardening – even a half-finished blog post about last year’s art making. In short, just about everything that made up my days and pleasures.
Patience has been, for me, about letting go of all of this and more importantly dealing with the negative self-talk, the feeling of loss, the imaginings, the fear, and trying to grab hold of and embrace my usual “This too will pass” mantra. I believe, no I KNOW, that to everything there is a silver lining, that when one door closes another opens – you pick the cliche – I know this to be a true thing, but it hasn’t always been easy to see through it clearly. Why did I fall? The answer to that is about more than pea shoots.
As the great philosopher Paul Simon sang “The problem is all inside your head she said to me. The answer is easy if you take it logically.” The bruised and battered limbs will heal themselves all in good time. Worse is what goes on in the head. Patience, I find, is about more than just waiting – it’s about how to live through the waiting, being present, finding and embracing the positive. Trusting that the reasons will reveal themselves.
“They say” that ‘when life hands you lemons you should make lemonade’. The trick is finding that recipe.
