Musings from the Firepit –
It’s late May and my wife and I are sitting around the fire pit on one of the few remaining cool nights before the heat sets in (tonight it will be in the mid to upper 40s in northeast Kansas). It’s a perfect night. My legs are warm and the air is remarkably cool.
I gaze into the fire. The coals pulse hypnotically with the slight breeze. Why can’t I shut my mind off? To just be present? Why am I thinking about work on a Saturday night?
I try and quiet my mind but then some random thought crosses my mind and I wonder. “I should look that up on Google!”
I reach for my phone…I pause, shaking my head in frustration. Be present.
“Wait, this would be a great article for Thriver.news. I need to send myself a note.”
I’m reaching for my phone again.
I’m twitching. Surely this is what phone addiction feels like.
Being Present
Have I ever been truly present?
There have been two times in my life where I was perfectly present. One was my first trip to Colorado. Gazing at the mountain sunset, I couldn’t imagine going home. Have I been chasing that all these years?
Gazing into the fire
We are made to gaze into the fire, a stove, candles, and oil lamps. We are wired to unwind at the end of the day. But there is so much noise. All this “noise, noise, noise, noise!” (I resist going and pulling the Grinch video or picture to add to the article).
Can you turn it off – including your mind?
Dysregulated vs. Rhythm
The new term for every childhood behavioral problem is that they are “dysregulated”. Like you SHOULD be regulated and controlled?
No. Instead, get back into the regulated rhythm of the ancients.
As the song says: “To everything there is a season”.
The night and day, the seasonal cycles. Rise early and work hard in the spring and summer, go to bed earlier and rest more in the winter. Feast and fast at the proper times. This is the calendar that our bodies were made for, and anything less feels, well, dysregulated.
RETURN.
Fast from the phone. Turn it off and get away from being “always on”. Always “present”, but with something or somebody else.
I take a deep breath. I’m back at the fire. I realize that I’m holding my breath. I am tense. I deep breathe slowly and relax one part at a time, first shoulders (wow, how tight they are), then my arms.
The little moments are slipping away. Monday morning I will regret not being in this moment, with cool weather and the flames dancing in the fire pit, a moment that likely won’t come again until Fall. Time, like the day, is fading away.
Venus is high in the Western evening sky.
The whip-poor-will sings. It’s curious that he does it after dark.
I gaze at my wife in the light of the fire. I see the gentle lines on her face and my life flashes before me. I take a deeper breath.
RETURN.
