Regeneration

I’m avoiding doing the dishes. It’s not the first time I’ve written those words on here, and it won’t be the last because I often avoid doing the dishes if I can help it. Sometimes, I can turn the experience into something beautiful, and by that I mean I put on some wonderful music and disappear into the invisible place that only I know. That’s when doing the dishes suddenly becomes the most wonderful thing ever.

I have nothing to say, and yet I felt a strong pull to connect with you all: these days, for me, that usually means that I either have something to say that someone needs to hear, or…one of you has something to say that I need to hear. I wonder which one it will be? Perhaps both.

Isn’t it beautiful how life regenerates? I’m going through a transition phase at the moment (which I’ll share more about in the coming months) and where it frightens me so terribly to be in this place…I also feel a sense of excitement and new life breathing into my world. It makes me think of my trees. How often I’ve wandered along my walking track, gazing up at the hanging bark. This shedding always seems such a natural process and one that is entirely welcomed by the tree and its natural surroundings. What does this shedding mean for that particular tree, I always wonder. It means the shedding of the old. The beginning of a new life.

Unlike trees, humans seem to resist the shedding of our old bark, don’t we, usually because we’re afraid of something (sometimes because we’re afraid of everything.) I get that. I’ve been doing it my whole life. But how I long to be a tree and let the bark fall without question, fully trusting that the new bark will grow back stronger and better than ever. And that’s where that frightening word comes into it. Trust. Trusting in the unknown means relinquishing control, and that is not an easy thing for a human being to do, especially not this human being.

But If my trees can do it, then by golly gosh, my friends— so can I.

Bring on my new bark, I say.