“I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
Lewis Carroll
Had a birthday about a week and a half ago. Lots of lovely celebratory cards and messages from folks who have been a part of my life for years….and even decades. It’s nice being remembered ~ and celebrated.
I took time afterwards to celebrate myself ~ and to reflect. The wonderful ritual-old quieting and looking at the who-I-am-Now and the who-I-was-then. A greater passage of “then’s” to look at now, too!
Soooo many shifts and changes. I can still see and feel the four-year-old who was astounded by the vastness of the desert in Arizona after leaving the rocky mountains and timberlands in northern Colorado. The seven-year-old who scouted the hills and explored caves in Utah; the ten (and 12, and 14, and 17) -year old who climbed high-high-high in the trees on base in Seoul, Korea.
Shifts and changes.
Yester me, yester you, yesterday.”
~ Stevie Wonder, Bryan Wells, Ronald Miller
Fast forward to later adolescence, young adulthood, parenthood. More moves, more changes. Forward again to early-middle-adulthood (felt like middle earth ~ ala Tolkien !) where so much more shifted and changed, again and again and again.
Discovering college, being affirmed for ‘having a brain’, learning and growing. More shifting and changing. New-career choices, white-water rafting, other career choices, skydiving (the ultimate tree climb). And, decisively finding the niche of what spoke to me professionally, and personally.
Discovering in later middle-adulthood I had spatial dyslexia (so that’s why things were confusing at the most inappropriate time!), and that now I could look and work at things My Way in order to further empower myself. Including giving myself permission to be a modern-day Luddite. (Yes, flip phone!)
“Don’t let yourself be trapped into being who you used to be if that’s not who you are anymore.”~ Rob Brezsny
All of this reflecting (which, actually I tend to do most every year around the mile-marker of birth-day-ing) brings a greater sense of Self. It honors the me-from-before: with laughter sometimes, with compassion, with an occasional godluv her pea-pickin’-heart (hahahaha), with lots of you-go-gal !! And, with a deeper understanding of what mattered to her then, and what matters to me now.
Yes, a great deal has changed. However, some profound acknowledged intricacies have remained. Whether exploring caves or swaying high in treetops, the need ~ and the gift ~ was recognizing those “alone-times” were not isolation (as was determined, fingerpointed, and judged by others ~ sigh), yet rather were those quiet, special, deeply-needed times of connecting with / communing with something greater; a place that filled the me-then. A place that fills the me-now.
So ~ happy birthday to me. I doubt if I’ll find myself swaying high in treetops today ~ physically that is ~ yet if you see me sitting quietly doing ‘nothing’, you can rest assured I am there in my Mind in a heartbeat, connecting and connected.
(Psst….May you discover and explore that which makes Your heart beat.)
Namaste’