Well it’s been just over a year now since I got back to Canada from Thailand a couple weeks after the global pandemic was declared mid-March.
How am I feeling now? It’s been a year of the same, but different, for me. My life has been very similar for over 10 years now in terms of how I’ve lived and loved, explored, shared and grown, and I’m about to face my 40th birthday in 2.5 more months.
I’ve come so, so far from the 30 year old version of me.
And over this last year, I’ve also come so, so far from the 38 year old version of me.
We’ve been through something that has impacted so many, and yet has changed my life in such a minor way. Why is this? Why has this completely impacted and wrecked so many others, yet I feel like even though I’ve undergone so many internal changes personally, at the same time, my general lifestyle has remained so much the same.
Am I an anomaly in this case? Have I been a lot less fearful than I realized over the last decade, or have I become a lot more numb again? I thought I worked through so much of that in this ongoing journey, yet I do recognize that life does spiral for us, until we learn a lesson, again and again, in different ways, until we embody it fully, from all planes – spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically.
And here I sit, in another ocean view home, for a whopping 3 months ahead – longer than any other time in the last 20 months, when I had a semi-permanent home outside of myself. So then, how much have I really changed? My exploration has just taken a smaller form in terms of actual coordinates and distance. Instead of having the entire world be my stage, it is now only the continent of North America (although really the west coast between Vancouver and LA), and at one point, halfway around the world in Thailand and Japan. I still explore so many things daily – my internal environment, a stretch of beach, the volleyball courts, the way a sunset transforms the sky, the people who surround me, my family dynamics, the relationship between myself and others and those I observe from a distance as they interact, afraid to show themselves as they really are.
And here I write. I am at the same laptop, doing similar things, helping people in the same ways that I always choose, activities that inspire me, motivate me to wake up in the morning, allow me to express my essence.
And I continue to learn. From each of my interactions and conversations in any given time frame, no matter how short or long it stretches. Those days that feel like weeks and those weeks that feel like moments. Watching the mirrors around me, as they shift and reflect back the dark and the light surroundings.
And while this may seem like a never-ending universe of successes and failures, wins and losses, pleasure and pain, there is still a sense of joy and wonder as one day turns into the next. Ever curious about what will happen next, I am awestruck by all that can happen in a single span of human created time. A ladybug lands on my hand before soaring its wings into the wind, a friend dreams about something that’s been pressing into my thoughts, a stranger is listening to a phrase which will shift his entire perspective at just the right moment. I feel the sand between my toes and the breeze across my skin.
And I will wake up, and I will do it all over again. Because tomorrow doesn’t matter. It is this moment, it is the creation of all of these special moments as they unfold, showing us the miracle of what’s possible in a web of this intricate space we share.
Whether it’s the same same, or different.
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