Flowing with Life

 

This song by Joe Purdy caught my heart recently and has it all tangled up in blue.  His voice, the guitar, the beauty of the lyrics, the complex nature of life and relationships; all of it.  The song is about love but not the syrupy kind of Hallmark but more importantly the kind that is full of complex emotions and that runs deep to the soul.  The kind of love of life and the wistful wandering spirit that knows that there is more to life than being stuck in the same moment over and over.  My heart has been capture because I can see myself in Mary Mae in the song.  I have always been a spirit that yearns to wander the world and see the vastness of life that is bigger than the stressors presented in life.  Lately that part of me has been stirring inside.  As life picks up, spinning and twirling, I feel that yearning deep inside.  My heart wants to flow with life and swim like a fish while my head is say “oh god, the end is near, hunker down.”
It is so easy to get caught up in the “he said, she said” drama of the moment stress and lose sight of what life is really about.  Who doesn’t do that from time to time? Maybe even far more often than one would like.  The nature of the life we lead these days has us caught in the present moment but not in the way that Jon Kabat Zinn speaks of in this Youtube clip

 

Mindfulness is about fully experience each moment as if it never occurred before.  This would mean taking in all the good and not so good points of the moment that is occurring right here, right now.  The present moment that we often get stuck in is more like what Bill Murray’s character experiences in Groundhog Day.  The mind is trapped in experiencing the past, often not so good moments, over and over and over again.  This could be literal through obsessive worrying and rumination or it could just be more subtle like the mind picking up on everything in the present moment that is stressful.  This kind of hyper focus hijacks the body and takes it on a roller coaster ride activating the stress response (or “fight/flight” response.)  The fall out of chronic activation of the stress response is HUGE; heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, adrenal fatigue, depletion of immunity and the list goes on and on.  In the mental health field it is often called “anxiety and depression” but truly who wouldn’t be anxious or depressed with the way in which we are living now a days?
This Time magazine article http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/07/the-most-stressed-out-generation-young-adults/ cites research that young adults are found to be more stressed out than adults. Seriously?  What is going on here PEOPLE?  Good Grief as
Charlie Brown would say.  We are caught in the hamster wheel of misery and we often times don’t know how the heck to get out of it.  How do we move from fear to flowing with life?
UGH.  Enough!  Back to Mary May and Bobby.  To me, this song represents everything that my heart desires; love, wandering, seeking, growing, reaching, experiencing life and truly living.  Every time I play it tears come to my eyes.  I believe that this has been happening because there have been many moments of stress, fear, frustration and angst lately.  But at the same time, the Universe keeps serving up opportunities that have possible potential but are not clearly defined yet.  It kind of feels like that game that you play with toddlers
that are learning to walk.  They walk towards you, you back up, they take another step and then you back up again.  I am being lead in a direction that is not as secure as I am used to but my heart keeps leading the way.  The fear kicks up, the mind starts racing and the heart says “be still, it’s ok, all will be more than well.”  So I continue on, shedding layers as I take a step forward each day.  It would be far easier if the opportunities presenting themselves were sure things.  This would help the logical, linear and responsible part of me feel far more settled. But just as life has it, that is not happening and I believe that’s because I am meant to give up being tethered to a false sense of security.  And so I keep moving.  We get what we need, not always what we want.  Any of this relating????  Surely I imagine it is.  These days we are all being put to the test to move from the heart instead of the head.  How are you doing with all of this?  What helps you to stay grounded in your heart and flow with life when the head starts swirling?  I have loads of things that help but for today I will spend some time outside and go see my grandmother. No one grounds me more than her.
Best wishes flowing with life and living
from your heart!
Cheers!

 

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