#89: Rest as reinvention. Stability as revolution.
The requirements for integrating transformation.
The Luminist is a reader-supported publication that illuminates the pain, the pleasure, and the paradox on the path to technicolor living. Subscribe below to receive posts about how loss teaches us to get the most out of life (along with silly gifs) in your inbox every Saturday.
It’s been six weeks since I last sat on this grey sectional, and now I have no desire to get off it.
After a month-long pilgrimage, followed by a cruise through the fjords of Norway, a museum/show/restaurant tour of London, and the DO Lectures in Wales, I’m finally back in the woods of Virginia, and totally rewriting my understanding of home and of growth.
Home has always been a safe harbor, but that safety came with monotony and stagnation. When I pulled into the garage after an international business trip or family vacation, it felt like an anticlimax. Daily routines, to-do lists, and predictable reality awaited me, all a bit of a letdown after the invigorating unknown of travel.
Adventure was where I grew, home was where I rested until the next adventure.
But now, I see it differently. Home isn’t a mundane reality check; it’s a sanctuary. It’s where we integrate all that we’ve learned and experienced on our journeys.
The kids flit in and out, chatting with me about their online courses, relationship status updates, and dinner plans.
I haven’t turned on a movie or even opened a book. I just stare out at the trees… and share tidbits of my time away whenever they check to make sure I’m still breathing.
I have plenty I could be doing, even some I should be doing.
But I have a sense right now that this is the most important thing: to let the last six weeks settle into my bones and breath. To have patience as I reconfigure around innumerable life-changing experiences. To understand that this feeling of being a blob isn’t a dead end. I don’t need to fix it, to jump up and start writing posts, laying out goals, or summarizing takeaways.
All of that will come in time. But if I force it, I’ll be bypassing a part of the cycle that my body has clearly decided is important — processing and integration.
We can’t skip it, just like we can’t skip the painful emotions that come after a loss.
We don’t have to understand it. We just have to trust it.
I go to the rec center and do lazy laps in the pool.
The silence under the water is peaceful when I used to find it boring.
I go to Great Falls and walk the paths I know like the back of my hand. It’s like seeing an old friend who understands I want their company more than their conversation.
I spend slow mornings in bed, looking out over the forest canopy. From this bird’s eye perspective I can look out over my life, but I’m not in a rush to change anything I see.
The action impetus that has defined much of my life is… paused.
It would be easy for me to fret about it. To worry that something is wrong with me. To force myself to get back on the horse.
But I’ve trained for this moment. I’ve learned to embrace the cycles that rule our emotions and bodies and lives.
I’m excited to see who I am on the other side.
Just as much as we need adventures, challenges, things that stretch us, we need a safe place to land.
None of the post-challenge transformation can happen if we don’t have a place to get off the ride, slack-jawed and stoop-shouldered, and rest.
That place — the place of “same old”, auto-pilot, no thought required — is actually where the change happens. There we can curl up into our little chrysalis, melt into goo… and then when we’re ready reform into something new.
Who knew grey sectionals held so much power.
At home,
In our wonderful, modern, western society rest is often looked down on. What a great insight! It takes time, and time away from an event or activity, to integrate it into our understanding and abilities. And I totally agree on the freshness and wonder and perspective travel can bring us. And it’s interesting to note that all wisdom traditions tell us that in the ordinary and everyday is where we find God, OKness, the absolute, greater consciousness, our true home, or whatever you want to call that thing from which everything else comes from. Enjoy your homecoming, and your to do lists 🙂, Sue!