Sometimes, I worry myself. I’m a pretty cerebral person; I tend to live in my head a lot. No matter what I do, I find myself constantly thinking of everything around me. It’s a beautiful mess of emotions, facts, situations, and possibilities. It’s a lot of stuff, and I don’t often get a chance to sort through and make sense of it. This jumbled mess builds up, and it eventually hits a point that strains me. It seems that no matter what I do, or how I plan, or how much I try to save, it’s never enough. As soon as I start getting ahead or making progress, it seems disaster hits. It’s been wreaking havoc on me. I find myself counting the dollars to the next paycheck and wondering if I will make it. Then my car dies. I get sick. I have nightmares. Those worries tend to build up, and it’s a very stressful place to be. Today, tonight, those worries built up to a head. The specters of fear, doubt, frailty, failure, loneliness, anger, all combined in a cocktail of worries. Alone in my apartment, there was nothing I could do about that worry.
So I went for a walk. I strapped on a bottle of water, and set out to walk to the park. As I left the apartment, I could see that the sun hung perilously low in the sky. Once in the park, I got on the path and headed west towards the dying sun. Left foot, right foot, onward I strode, letting my poisonous thoughts and worries swirl and rise to the top of my psyche. I let that stress and pressure build and build, and started concentrating on my breathing, visualizing letting those thoughts spiral outward into oblivion. After half an hour or so, it helped. I started to feel better. I continued to walk, following the winding path through the woods and fields.
As I emerged from a particularly dark section of wood, I found myself at a stopping place. It was a flat expanse of concrete in a large open field. As the salmon and gold sky of early dusk deepened into the violets and reds of sundown, I decided to sit for a spell and watch the change. I guzzled down half the bottle of water, and watched the magic happen. It’s something that happens each and every day, but I find myself wondering how often people actually stop to look, to watch, to experience it. I know I am guilty of letting that moment pass by near each and every day. Pink, yellow, salmon, gold, red, orange, violet, purple, and a myriad of other hues fill the sky. Even as the sunlight waned and died, other light made itself apparent. A viciously brilliant spot of light flared into existence; Venus, reflecting the light from the dying sun, allowing a bit of that brilliance to cheat death.
As the light from the sun ceased to illuminate my corner of the globe other spots of light sparked and cut through the atmosphere. The sky darkened and photons that had traveled for millennia fell to Earth. I lay down, and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine each photon as a brilliant little sun, a pinprick of intense light and heat that would scour the negativity from me. I was lost in thought, and lost in bettering myself.
It occurred to me, as those violets, purples, and deep reds of sunset began to be replaced by the deep blues and blacks of night, that I was roughly a mile and a half from my apartment. In a park. As night fell. It struck me that I was, perhaps, less than wise in staying in the field as long as I had. I drained my bottle of water, got up and oriented myself East towards home. While the sky above had darkened considerably, there was still more than enough light to see clearly at ground level. Each step, however, saw the darkness close in a little more.
Human beings are primarily sight-based creatures. So as twilight turned into night, the lack of direct illumination started to leech color out of the world. The forest became a tapestry of grays and black, the primeval landscape of bad dreams and horror movies. Picking out distinct shapes became harder and harder, and strange shapes moved just beyond the area I could clearly see. Despite the perfect setting for a slasher flick, I found that I wasn’t afraid or worried. I found myself walking with my head high, confident in my path. As I walked, my eyes adjusted, and I pushed back the darkness, and contemplated what I had learned. I worry too much. I fear too much. And I tend to let that fear paralyze me. I’m not a big risk taker, by any means… but perhaps that needs to change. Perhaps I need to take a chance, make a change. Do something, anything, to shake up the world around me.
So I’m taking steps to do that. It has been over a year since I have blogged. Ironically, this blog started originally for much the same reason as this post: as a dedication to better myself. That original post was about adding to myself, about building upon me. This post is more about bettering myself by fixing the bad. I suppose that is all part of growing up; learning new lessons, and applying them as best you can.