Surrender

I came to the mountains in the hope to feel like my inner Max Frisch or Thomas Mann again. And then it didn’t happen. It felt like I had taken this entire world-y and work-ly baggage with me. And I felt resentment. Like I was wasting this chance for serenity. And rest.

In me, a coalition has been growing against any form of work; and they have been growing increasingly non-cooperative. Another part has been meeting this coalition with some amount of disdain: “Childish,” they say. “Worldly things don’t wait for you to have a break during the holidays. That’s not how that works. Get rest when you can, and work when it is demanded. And it’s demanded now. Of course, you can do it. Just do it.” And while I know I can do it, it feels as if doing it despite the coalition makes… makes a hole grows, somewhere inside of me; a pit in my stomach; and as it is taking up more and more space, I can notice it crowd out… something like happiness.

But today something interesting happened. Suddenly, like a bit of lightning, it just appeared inside of me. Surrender. Surrender to my own experience. The possibility that I can fight in surrender. A form of fighting that doesn’t ask for my soul as its sacrifice; that doesn’t threaten to make me bitter and angry all the time. Also, surrender to pain and exhaustion. And suddenly a space, a growing ability in me for seeing truth and love, in others, the world and myself.

Whatever it is my heart was trying to fend off… it feels like it has melted away. Feeling calmer. Feeling like I can talk to the mountains again.

Still not sure what’s goning happen. Things in the world and at work feel difficult and not exactly like there is some light at the end of the tunnel that I am steering towards. It’s more like a maze, or a plane, or a changing landscape; there is fog, there are hills and valleys, and threads and challenges and opportunities that just appear. There isn’t much of a sense of where things are going. I sure am getting places, but why those places rather than others? I don't exactly know. And I am 'getting myself' to those places or is the world getting me there? I don't know; feels like I am mostly just responding to and interacting locally with what the world is bringing to me.

Makes me think of life. I'm also not sure what life is directed at, if anything at all.

I wish for my soul more happiness and rest and balm. And I also hold fear; fear the trade will always, always be about real, worldy suffering, real-world chances of extinction, injustice or chaos. Don’t know whether this is true or not, nor does this feel like this is about that sort of truth, anyways. I think I am just feeling love and fear. And I don’t know what to do with it, or how there could ever be a solution to this.

But for now, I want to try to surrender to that.

…

I love the mountains. The cold air. The rawness and roughness of nature up here. I think it mirrors the mix of aloneness and separation, and belonging and warmth and love in my soul.