Heart Reading … Day 34
Trusting your heart beat to guide your words and actions.
Isn’t it all too human to worry about the day or days ahead — the meetings and logistics, the people to see and places to be? Even with the best intentions to be mindful, the minute I got in my vehicle today my peaceful heart seemed to lose its way.
I’ve started looking toward the trees and flora when I am in parking lots and other public spaces instead of toward the buildings and other vehicles. This is a more life affirming way of being in public than with the undisciplined mental energy that kicks up with the latter approach (like make pretend stories about so-and-so over there…).
However, there is only so much rootedness one can seek before they become imbalanced toward the alternative energetic pole. If we’re all “head energy” we can lose our underlying sense of connectedness to each other. If we’re all “heart energy” we can lose our mobility and capacity for engagement.
These daily heart readings have challenged my agitation which might seem like a very good thing on the surface. But I thrive with mental agitation — or at least I have long believed this! Agitation makes me feel empathically engaged with the world; it keeps me reading the news and bringing my body places where it can make incremental change for the better.
Privilege has long been on my mind and heart, particularly after the in-depth investigation I did over the past year into the Karen trope and the book I wrote about it.
When one has a home with a yard — especially if said yard is adjacent to an undevelopable forest or body of water, or when one comes from privilege — such as parents who communicate with some degree of skill and sustained positive intention, or when one grows up feeling connected to extended family and community, they are likely to feel rooted in something much larger than themselves. And oftentimes we actually have more conditions for experiencing a sense of rootedness than we allow ourselves to feel, but extenuating circumstances of chronic distress keep these conditions in a heavy fog that doesn’t lift until we call out and others help shine their light alongside us.
I am feeling particularly rooted at this point in my life. I have tried to sabotage myself by a literal uprooting; I have a history of leaving jobs after a few years of learning in order to re-root elsewhere — to explore the greener opportunities out yonder. It seems that the uprooting efforts are coming to an end and I now seek to synthesize and glean, to harvest the fruits so to speak. And my partner who has contributed greatly to this rootedness has pledged very solid interest in joining me. If this isn’t cause for hopeful celebration I don’t know what is!
