Wave; acrylic on canvas; March 26, 2012
I’ve heard multiple times, “you need to learn to ride the wave”. And so, I learned to surf the wave of life. Somehow, I believed that surfing the wave would be sufficient.
But no one told me that all waves come to an end (yeah, I should have known, it seems obvious in retrospect, I get it). It feels like the time is ‘now’ for the wave that we’ve been riding to come into shore, such that a new wave may begin. The ebb and flow of waves. The ebb and flow of life. It feels like the wave we’ve been riding is coming in to shore. It feels like it is time to get back into the water and swim out to the new wave.
We have been moved out of our comfort and routines. It has felt choppy and painful and has brought dissonance and furthered divisiveness. However, by being jostled out of our routine (rut), it seems that we are more readily open to newness. While it doesn’t feel like, sometimes I wonder if it has been a kinder and gentler way of transition than just running hard until we hit a wall. This gives us the opportunity for change and work.
What is emerging seems to be a new way of thinking, a new way of being, based on grids of interconnection. The energy that we bring to these spaces of interconnection will be key. Cultivating compassion, at both the individual and systemic levels, will foster and maintain these interconnections. It will help us build a culture of restoration.
This also feels like a time when many are walking upon a ledge, upon the edge of a ledge. Those who tend the edges and create both boundaries and radical change are definitely needed. But, for the majority of us, our work is not at the edge. Many of us have allowed the storms and whirlwind of drama to pull us to the edges. But most of our work, much of our purpose is within the larger open space of our lives: our communities, families, organizations, systems.
What is it that you want to be doing? That you need to be doing? Listen to your body; listen to your heart. They are much more well prepared for this than we might think. Allowing these to be our drivers will better serve us than to allow our minds to spin the many stories that it might. We need to stop feeding the storms and whirlwinds and to start feeling our way into the next wave.
It feels like it is time to get back in the water. To be watching the horizon for the new waves. To start in small ways. To begin.
Mary Jo
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