To navigate the wild world, you need to move your basic perceptual and analytical thinking out of your head and into the whole inner space of the body. – Martha Beck
It’s been hot today – so hot that I had to strip down to as little as I could and lie as still as possible, just to try to think about something other than being hot.
I’ve had a crazy headache for the past four days and a case of hives for the past month. Our internet only gives us five minutes at a time.
I am sitting in our living room watching the rain fall. The breeze is luscious, and we have opened every door and window in order to let that breeze have its way with us.
The rain is bringing lots of leaves down around us, and it seems that more than statistically should be are ending up in the pool.
As I watch, a small green and black frog uses our patio as his path out for the evening. A gecko chases his dinner around the window screen. Some strange insect that looks suspiciously like dryer lint makes its way across the rocks outside the window. The rain falls straight down.
It all tells me the same thing.
There are ways, I know, that we could put things into place that would make us feel more in control here. Air conditioning would make us think it was a ‘better’ temperature. Better screens would keep bugs and snakes and spiders and butterflies out of the house. We could hire someone (as many here do) to clean our pool. We could try to make our life here as easy as possible; pretend we had some control.
Taking a pain killer will put a pause on my headache and an antihistamine will give me a break from my hives. A bottle of wine would make me forget my worries for an hour or two. I could list dozens of other things I could do – have done – to help me forget where I am uncomfortable or ashamed or generally unhappy.
But all of that would be missing the point.
The lesson that living in the jungle is teaching me is that I am as unimportant in the grand scheme of things as it is possible to be. We all are. I have met trees here that are older than we can imagine, and every inch of ground is populated by insects smaller than I can see. If we walked away from this house and nobody came back, it would be claimed by the jungle in a heartbeat. They fix our electrics and a tree takes them out again. They fix the road and the rain washes it away.
None of it matters.
But the rest of the lesson – the true lesson – is that I am also equally as important as that tree; as the gecko; as the rain. Every ring is a part of the whole. Every creature is a critical piece of the picture; every drop returns eventually to the ocean.
All of it matters.
I am it, it is me, and my place in it is to be as present in the moment as I can while doing my best to keep perspective on the rest. I have not got – never had – any control over any of it. (No matter how much all of the current thinking says we do.) The only thing I can control is how I choose to react to each moment; how I choose to be.
And if it sounds ludicrous and self-important, maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
So in this moment, I choose to notice the heat, the rain, the gecko and the frog, the leaves floating on the surface of the pool, the greyness of the sea, my husband and the dinner he is cooking.
In this precise moment, that is all there is.
And I am grateful.
xo
The river, my friends, is glorious. It’s made up entirely of cascades and rapids and beautiful pools that would be wonderful to swim in when the water is a little higher. It’s truly beautiful. Some of the trees are still primary rainforest trees, so big I couldn’t put my arms around them. It’s magic, pure and simple.
