On my morning walk yesterday, I found the chatter in my head around my “usefulness” on this earth and as it happens sometimes, not in such a self-loving way. At the same time, it was such a beautiful morning and I was trying to stay mindful and look at just the trees, the path, the birds, the sky and so on.
At one point, my eyes caught the formation of thin clouds in the sky. I have always loved watching and playing with clouds, and now they seemed to be forming a feather shape, a slightly bigger and widespread but nevertheless a feather, at least to my eyes. Looking at it with delight, feeling lighter, I just thought:
What about the usefulness of one feather we see on the road or falling towards ground from the sky? The magic, the sense of flight and weightlessness it evokes in us or just its simple beauty…
Or think about a falling leaf in autumn – a “dead” leaf falling from a tree, swirling and swirling in the wind until it lightly touches the ground, maybe to be gently lifted up again and carried a little further. Its graceful movement and surrender, the beauty of its colors and the soft “shish” sounds it makes echoing a lullaby.
What if just like that, our being on this earth was useful and enough? Especially when the mind gets caught up in the collective conditioning of the “you are not enough” game, the “must achieve/learn/do/buy/get more, more, more to be happy ”, we can lose sight and miss the beauty of the moment, when exactly this very now moment has the potential to wake us up from our trance.
What if I could just be the lightness of a feather or the total surrender of a leaf, what if just being “me” this moment was enough? What is possible for me, for us when we open up more space in our lives to “being” here now?
I looked up again and as clouds do, the feather was already dispersing, disappearing and moving to form new smaller shapes.
What if it is OK for us to be a feather in one moment, and then a leaf the next moment and then a writer the next moment and then a mother, father or a worker the next moment? What if just like clouds we had the freedom to “shape-shift”- to form, un-form and re-form while enjoying the skies regardless of blue or stormy?
If we are open to it, Mother Nature is always, always here to gently and lovingly remind us the pure joy and lightness of just being in her many subtle ways…
Enlightened by and light as a feather!
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