I certainly feel like that when we're at the ocean. All I need do is stand on the shore and everything happens without me doing a thing. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. It leaves piles of the smallest shells crushed by their life in the sea. At my feet the shore birds skitter, curved beaks parting the smallest of bivalves as air bubbles recede in the sand. Overhead the gulls screech and just at the waterline pelicans glide or rise and dive. The stiller I keep, yes, the more life at water's edge expands.
Have you noticed? When you're in the right place, you don't feel the urge to go anywhere. At home we live in a wood and it's the same. You can look outdoors at any time of day and see the miracle of creation: towering pines, rugged shaggy bark Hickory trees, squat dogwoods, oaks and red maples. Branches bare in winter, over-heated in summer and glowing in Fall. Today leaves floating down, settling about in red and gold. Raking them is a rhythmic delight, the sound, the smell; letting them be, too.
Priestman says, you can drift along doing your thing and nothing particular happens except the sea. Or, here in the Piedmont, the forests. North Carolina is a green state. Our friends from Santa Barbara, California, kept marveling the way we are sheltered by trees everywhere. Overhanging the roadways, nestling the houses, spreading branches in parks and woods and gardens. And with them, cardinals, finches and woodpeckers; gray and red foxes (we have one each); entertaining squirrels (too many to count); deer and geese and hawks and turkey vultures and ravens. It feels quite a privilege to pause for the geese in our path or watch the deer bound off gracefully.
Can't we nurture this feeling wherever we live? Don't you feel privileged to be where you are, where you choose to be or stay? I almost don't need to go anywhere else. I don't have a bucket list. Granted, I am older, but I have never had a bucket list. Wait for the sun to rise. Study the stars. Watch the night grow longer and the moon head higher each night. What we do is enough. What we do is a privilege. Our lives are a privilege.
And if times are chaotic for some of the many reasons we can't help, take a break from the worry and stress and keep still for a moment. The sky hasn't moved. It won't go away. Breathe and look up.
Let's make everything simpler. Let's try not to let stuff crowd in on us. Let's keep our lives as empty as possible. And in that way, paradoxically, they expand and are full.
What do you think? Nina Naomi
