If you choose to, one day you may look back on this time and see how it prepared you for everything that was to come.
I’ve never noticed the colour yellow as much in a year before, as this one.
First, walking in the Cotswolds with Susan Ni Chodrain, we found ourselves walking through the middle of a rapeseed field in full bloom, exploding with the kind of yellow that is usually reserved for a felt tip pen or a computer graphic.
We later saw other similar fields from across a valley, jumping out amidst the rolling green of the English countryside.
Walking, recently, with my daughter Leah on my back, we were struck by the incredible abundance of (I think) buttercups appearing in a (again, I think) reed bed previously so brown that deer would hide in it, perfectly camoflaged.
A couple of weeks after my walk with Susan, I happened to walk through the same field, seeing the same rapeseed and yet… the yellow was gone.
The buttercups, too, will not be with us long.
I know someone who goes to a physio. This physio has always been more than that, always connecting physical injuries with other events in life. Always knowing more than just her physiotherapy.
Recently, hearing the report of the turmoil in her client’s life, she explained, touching into what she knows that is more than just her physiotherapy, that this period is the most changeable in a decade. That she is seeing turmoil repeating across her clients.
As I heard this story about the physio, I realised I had seen the same thing. Series of events in people’s lives so surprising that things that would normally be headline news were relegated to an afterthought.
My own personal turmoil, much as I wish it would just resolve so that life could be as it was, has served me in these weeks. It has offered me the opportunity to hold the turmoil of others, as disaster piles on disaster. It has grown my capacity, much as I wish it would just go away so that life could be as it could have been.
It reminds me of a conversation I had once with a friend of mine who has an interest in powers beyond what a rational extremist would accept. Normally, our conversations are full of ease, but this one ended tense, pained and anxious… for me at least. Later, my friend observed that as we were speaking, a total solar eclipse had been happening. A gravitational pull rarely experienced, creating a completely different experience in my life to what would be expected.
There were other forces at play in that call, but still… It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
And then, of course, the sun and moon were no longer aligned.
Whatever powers are at work now, coming together to pull almost unimaginable weeks of turmoil into alignment, they will pass.
If your life seems to have piled new turmoil onto new turmoil onto new turmoil… remember that.
Remember that the rapeseed is only that yellow, temporarily.
Remember that the sun and the moon continue to turn and twist, away from each other after they have been together.
Remember that we are stretched and changed by forces beyond our control, and that after, we come back together (except, maybe, once).
Remember that, if you choose to, one day you may look back on this time, and see how it prepared you for everything that was to come.
I have to say, slowing down to imagine that this turmoil is preparing those of us going through it for something else to come… that is not a very comforting thought.
But, still.
Better to be prepared.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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