I drive at night because I find it meditative, especially in winter when days are so short that time seems to fold in on itself. I crave the silence and serenity this brings, seeing the mountains silhouetted against the landscape; each tiny pinprick of light a luminescent sign of life in the distance, so close and yet with the barriers of society pervading, preventing me from anything more than an outside glimpse. I feel alone, yet at one with the land. At one with the settlers who came across the great prairie, looking for a better life nestled in the foothills of a mountain.
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do. ~ Victor Hugo
Sometimes I just want to keep on driving until I find myself in another land where reality is suspended, where I can find myself understood by a stranger and welcomed into a life not my own, one where people love me for who I am. It's not often I find that, and I often wonder when I do if it's just wishful thinking on my part.
Reality intrudes and I feel guilty, wasting a resource. Is my need to reflect in this way selfish or self love? Or is my need to drive just a prelude to the car wreck my life has become internally, where my emotions appear as splattered organs on the pavement, broken fragments of glass the vestiges of hope for the future?
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. ~ Thomas A. Edison
I was re-reading one of the sustainability posts I featured from mountainjewel, Winter is a Time to Dream and Rest, and I was struck by this phrase;
Inherent worth isn’t really a facet of many of our programming.
Our essential value as human beings is not a factor in what we are taught from birth. This is especially true for women.
Now I know some people were lucky enough to have parents where this statement is not true. But for the majority of people, self worth is something we learn from our friends. And if we don't have friends who continually slap us across the head and tell us to stfu with all the self abuse, how do we learn?
We learn from living life, reflecting on nature, through meditation and balance. Risking and failing give us the chance to self reflect and forgive ourselves for not living up to our own expectations - for not being the human beings we dreamed we could be.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being. ~ Michel de Montaigne
This is a continual lesson for me. Grace in failure. Learning to let go, knowing that I tried and failed, that I might have the courage to try again one day. Being open to the future, risking with my heart on the line, knowing I might fail. And even if I fail and try and fail again and again, I will try until my teeth hurt and my eyes fall out - because pain is better than knowing I never made the effort, never shared my thoughts with another.
There is also a lesson in knowing that maybe this is a time to step back and let myself recover and heal, to stop berating myself for any lack or failure. To let myself acknowledge silence and pain, winter and peace, to allow myself that long drive in the hills at 2am. To trust that I am worth loving.
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. ~ John Updike
photos of the rocky mountains at sunset by torico