“Life has rhythm. Even the tides at sea recede at regular intervals. If it were not so the sea would cover the land and break the order and discipline of nature.____There can be rhythm in our lives. We seem always off to one extreme or other, fearing relaxation will cause us to lose the race. ( We do need to pause and smell the coffee, roses, whatever it is!) But there are always two sides to living. It makes life new. It helps us wisely wait our turn. If we do not, we are out of order, and if we are out of order, we lose the race anyway.” Joyce Hifler, All Rivers Run To The Sea.
Allowing for relaxation means checking in with the self mentally and physically. It means to rest one’s mind, body, and spirit without a time limit and have that time be an ok experience. The idea is to slow things down to where you can find a better viewpoint or clearly see your way forward. It helps to take a meditative position so you are being present and feel the rhythm of life around you, where you can push other things away from you if need be, or close doors left ajar. Our minds remember, and if our minds remember then our bodies do too! What it remembers is often below the surface, and in the past within our personal filing cabinet to be called up in a flash often muddying the waters we are in or confusing the direction we should take.
The rhythm of life is a cycle. The ages and stages of each life in which we become ourselves are full of hope which we need to look out for; hope is like a large island in vast waters, full of treasures to be found, it is a pleasant state of mind.
“The circle is one of the oldest figures in mathematics. But it does not take a mathematician to see his (or her) own life and how the simplest bits of his (or her) travel on a cycle. It is true that the straight line is the simplest line, but the circle is the simplest non-straight line. We cannot always push straight to whatever we want of life. It is so often necessary to go out around our actual goal before we can curve back and touch the high point we have been trying to reach. How deep and mysterious are these laws of life that direct us away from our objectives, sometimes in order to bring us back to them with the certainty of success.” Joyce Hifler, All Rivers Run To The Sea.
Such wisdom, such food for thought, is found in these cherished books of Hifler’s. Pearls of wisdom, which make you think. I love books that echo my thoughts or express y feelings in better ways. Life is full of fascinations because we are complex and therefor so is living life. It is about how we look at it. We can see all that is bad, or all that is good but in-between we find balance, for we would not know what bad or good is without knowing its opposite. Knowing is the balance of where we can choose to stand to view all things from.
The things I fear are different now that I am older; the rhythm of life needs to be slower because what is so familiar speeds time up, I look to things I do not know, to ways that are unfamiliar to me, where I am challenged and need to learn, where life slows down that I can take it in; where it does not seem to flow out of my reach. I savored more of what life is; to find it precious and dear in my head and heart.
Shakespeare writes, in Julius Caesar, “There is a tide in the affairs of men (and woman) which taken at the floods leads on to fortune; all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” To be bound in shallows is to be miserable. And not a few of us have already known the feeling of being caught on dry land like some great whale unable to move without the tide to buoy us up and fearing there would not soon be another tide strong enough or high enough to float us back out again. It is a desperate feeling to be on high ground and see other ships passing by on their way to interesting ports with cargoes of valuable goods. ___It is said that time and tide wait for no man. The tide must go out when it is programmed to go. There is no waiting while a ship finishes its loading, no holding back while the sea life gets safely back into deeper water. The only way to catch the tide is to be ready when it rolls out again.” Hifler.
I think that once on such a beach, and in such a position, that if we are thoughtful enough to figure out just how to move towards the water’s edge, where a strong tide will pull us back to where we need to go, rather than just lay there where we will die___we have a choice, we just need to find one. Just one, then two, then more? That fact of ending something we don’t need to do, or be as or have a part of our lives___, even fighting our way forward if need be is the only answer to moving forward and back into life’s rhythm where it is comfortable to thrive. We do this for ourselves because we are worth it, and worthwhile beings. We also stand as examples for others, that they too will have courage and find new ways to swim. This is helping humankind to be all we can be.
There is something else that happens as we live life, and that is that we are not alone in any particular experience. Someone else has been there and done that too.
As humans, we get involved with others in the process often overdo it to the extent we forget to take time for ourselves. Balance is the answer. No one else can balance who we are and want to be. What is true for us, is true for others, This is the way of life lived wall, be in its rhythm, and not knocking up against rocks that hold you back. It is ok to help people but not at our own expense where we are blinded to our own needs. We are no good to others if we are not all we can be. We all must find our own way. It can be done, falling into a hopeless state, or letting others do it for you___you rob yourself of living life. We are social but it living life requires the ability to be able to know how to be there for others. We cannot do “it” for others, they learn nothing if they do not make their own journey. It is important that others must take/make their own actions; it is ok to take a “disinterested interest” when it comes to others, it does not mean we cannot support them; it means we are not so involved we don’t live our own lives and feel the rhythm.
I am not saying don’t help other people, because we need other people’s help. It is how we do it that gets things funky. If you throw a ball for a child, and always fetch it, what happens? Has the child learned to get it and throw it back, has he or she found pleasure and the success of the game of toss? Does the child even know what it is they are experiencing?
Pejj Nunes
10/6/2021
Anisette Studios & Shibui Fine Arts 