When I’m meditating, which I’ve only just started doing regularly, for ten minutes a day, I tell myself: This is all you need to do right now. You don’t need to do anything else.

It is such a relief to the mind to have that bit of rest — focused rest, not sleep — when the mind is aware and present and yet not obliged to do anything but sit and observe.

I name what I’m feeling: worry, usually, or the desire to make a list and get organized, to remember all of the things that need doing. I name it and I say, you don’t need to do this right now.

It is such relief.

I really don’t know what life is about, honestly. I don’t know if there are big gestures that a person should be aiming themselves toward, in life. When I’m sitting still inside my mind, I think, no, life is not about big gestures. It is not about effort. It is about ease. It is about stillness. It is about being witness to.

But how, I think, could I accomplish anything without effort? I am such a believer in hard work. Yet I know, too, that much of what I’ve accomplished seems to come instead from grace. It isn’t that hard work hasn’t gotten me somewhere — hard work and discipline perhaps creating the necessary space for grace. But then I think, well, no, grace isn’t dependent on work or effort. We can all of us be graced by grace, that is the nature of grace. And then I wonder whether those who stand and wait, without an apparent plan, without the desire to change or be changed, aren’t actually on to something more profound than I am, with my striving and reaching and stretching.

Another question: What is this compulsion to share what I see and experience?

Could I not go there, to a place of stillness and grace, and return quietly? Apparently, this blog post would suggest that no, I cannot. But I’m thinking about it. Rather hard thinking, in truth.

All of the following probably fits into the category of wanting to change or be changed, but I don’t know how to address what I’m feeling in different terms: I would like to learn how to put aside the striving and access the ease of presence. I would like to learn how to clear more space for my mind to be still and focused. I would like to learn how to love the world more, to name what I see without judgement.

Happy snow day.

xo, Carrie