Vision boards and stalled lives

This year, I decided to start my year out with a new path and a new vision. On January 1st, I went on a 9 mile hike. To me, this signified activity, energy and moving forward. and the number 9, the magical number of alchemy and its art of transformation, seemed an auspicious number.

Then I spent the first Friday evening of the year making a vision board. My very first vision board. I filled it with images of things I hoped for and needed in my life.

And for awhile, it seemed that my fresh start and wonderful visions were working. I was amazed. I became a proponent of vision boards. I looked at mine every single day, and prayed a prayer of thanks, living in profound gratitude.

And then everything started to crumble. The core of my board, which I thanked G-d for every day, dissolved. The edges and corners that seemed to be coming into fruition, vanished. The small images that dotted the board and appeared to be within reach or even occurring, were suddenly no where within reach.

I looked the board last night, as I wandered around my apartment, and it seemed to be mocking me. "You thought you could be happy? You? Ha! Fat chance of that! You thought you could find lasting and forever love? You thought you HAD that? Ha! Ha! You will NEVER be good enough! A home to share with friends and loved ones? Yeah, right! No one sets foot in your house except you! Feeding the hungry? How about being hungry yourself instead!"

I wanted to rip it to shreds. See those hopeful images in pieces on the ground. I cursed my naivete for believing that something a simple as a board and hard work could bring happiness into my life. But I did not have the energy to take it down, Much less rip it up. What's the point? Why waste the effort?

Tonight the vision board will join my trash in the dumpster. Still whole. But dead. So much for daring to dream.

Mountains

When I moved to the Rockies years ago, I arrived at night. The flight into Salt Lake City dropped down on what would over the next few years become a familiar, stomach testing approach into an airport that sat deep in a valley. In the darkness and the rush to gather baggage and get to a hotel, I could not really see the mountains. Although the pilots who had landed my plane knew they were there, and knew how to maneuver down safety between the ranges of the Wasatch on the East and the Uintahs on the West, they remained invisible to me.

In the morning, I walked outside to go get breakfast and stopped cold. I was completely surrounded by mountains. Although the closest ones were probably 10 miles away, their size and unexpected presence felt enclosing. A Florida flat-lander stood, mostly in awe, but a little in fear. What had I done?

Looking back, those mountains and my reaction to them was more than just a change in geography. It was the first real leap into a new world. And my first encounter with that feeling of enclosure and awe and what have I done...

That feeling has come back to me again and again, as I've moved into my life. And for awhile, my reaction was the same. Fear. Awe. Even panic. But I've learned something from that mountain experience.

Over the years in the Rockies, I learned to feel less overwhelmed by those mountains and all the others I lived among. I went back to Florida and drove my car, alone, across the country from South Florida to Utah. In the course of the drive, over switchbacks and steep climbs, I learned to see the mountains better. Then there were days spent walking on the mountains, feeling their shape and strength and substance for myself, whether through the soles of my favorite purple hiking boots or barefoot in an icy mountain stream. I don't think I ever lost my awe...they remained beautiful, especially when the rising or setting sun painted them in a dozen different colors. But I lost my fear. I stopped being shocked to see the mountains when I stepped outside. They became accessible.

I am learning to apply that lesson to my life.

There are new things that happen in my life...things just as sudden and scary and enclosing as that early morning view of the mountains. And I get scared. And I wonder what I have done. And I see how close the danger seems to be.

In those times, I try to imagine the mountains. I try to remember that moment in the hotel parking lot, and the very different feeling I had years later walking in the same mountains on a cold winter day shooting roll after roll of winter photography. Same mountain. Different world.

How did I get here

My life has been a collection of weird coincidences and unlikely accidents.

Except for one thing...I don't believe in coincidences. Or accidents.

It's all, somehow, on purpose.

Except that I can't always (okay, usually!) understand the "on purpose" part until it's already past. THEN I get the point. Later.

So what is this blog?

This is poetry.

This is a collection of the gee whiz things I finally got. And the ones I am still mulling over, in hopes that someone here will have some suggestions.

This is me.