Slowing down...

A brief observation I wanted to get written down before this part of my experience might begin to fade.

Slowing down.

I had to do that a lot, an immense lot.

And you know how much I like speed. Don't like to drive slow, don't like to walk slow, don't like to do things slowly... everything was always best when done with speed, focus and efficiency. This had become so much my second nature that I had somewhat forgotten it was merely a habit and nothing but the product of my belief that there is never enough time in each day to get everything done... and those experiences of dawdling time away at my desk, of daydreaming about this and that, I had come to burden with a certain amount of guilt rather than allow myself to see it as a natural balancing out that my deeper nature was providing for me.

Last weekend, when I was down by Ooms pond, taking those baby steps through the grass, very carefully at first on the uneven ground, and measuring my expanding capacity by how many benches I could reach to sit down on... all of a sudden on my way back up, as I was passing by one of the old apple trees, I felt the beauty of this slowness. A starling was singing up in the bare branches, and continued to sing as I was passing underneath the tree. My feet were touching the ground slowly, slowly the trunk was approaching with all it's bark and tiny moss pieces clinging to it so gracefully, slowly the filigree of branches floated by above my head, the wind moving through my hair, past my head further up passing through them, slowly the dry grasses to my left were revealing the little holes the mice had run through during the winter, and all the while the little starling kept singing cheerfully right over my head. Nature speaking to me its beautiful preciousness.

In that moment I remembered how I used to walk by this tree, how fast I used to pass it, and how little I had ever given a chance to reveal itself, and in that moment I was so glad and so grateful for having been stopped in my tracks, and within one fell swoop all apprehension of aging, all arrogance and judgement and pity that had been attached in my mind to slowing down fell away. Poofhhhh, gone. In that moment I began looking forward to becoming an old woman, walking slowly, the rush of life forever in the past.