Sunshine on Wednesday morning left me feeling cheerful, especially after I went outside to get the mail around noon. The air felt warmer, and the sun was noticeably getting higher in the sky and farther north. Spring didn’t seem that far away, even though the calendar clearly says winter is not nearly over.
Of course, we’ve also had our share of cloudy mornings. Still, I feel much better than last year, when a long string of dark winter days left me so blah that I ordered a sparkly sleeveless top from a catalog to cheer myself up (much to my daughter’s amusement). This year, the winter blues have mostly stayed away. To match a hopeful mood, I chose an image of a peaceful landscape for my art display, showing trees with leaf buds opening at winter’s end.
For whatever reason, though, I couldn’t manage to shake off a persistent feeling that my energy level is not where it should be. I have to confess, I started ruminating about how long it might take me to improve it (which, of course, broke my New Year’s resolution to stifle my unhelpful mental chatter).
“Do you really want an answer to that question?”
Oh, great—my snarky future self Kass had chosen that moment to pop out of my subconscious mind and lecture me on my lack of mental discipline. I sighed.
“I have a feeling I’ll get one regardless.”
Kass grinned cheerfully in response. I pictured her wearing faded jeans and a matching denim jacket, ambling lazily along beside the stream in the art display image.
“Not necessarily. If you told me no, you didn’t want to hear it, then I would leave you alone. But, of course, you are a past me, which means you wouldn’t be that much of a wuss. So, I can feel confident that you do want an answer—right?”
After mentally unpacking the various parts of that statement, I sighed once more and grudgingly told her, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay. Well, since you’re expecting to get criticism, and life has a way of giving us what we expect to get, I’ll start by saying that you asked the wrong question. Energy level isn’t something that stays constant until you improve it. Rather, it changes all the time because it’s a reflection of everything coming into, and going out of, your life. It’s sort of like water level,” and Kass gestured toward the stream, “which can go up or down very quickly, depending on how much rain falls upstream and whatever happens downstream. So, what you really want to consider is flow, rather than level. Does that make sense?”
“Sort of.” I looked at the quiet little stream, which didn’t seem to be moving at all. “When I row on the river, a low water level isn’t necessarily a problem if there is enough flow to prevent weeds from clogging the riverbed. And when there is heavy rain, the water level can go from low to high in a matter of hours.”
“Yes, exactly—it’s those pesky weeds that are the problem.” Kass snapped off a long blade of dry brown grass and tossed it into the stream, where it sank very slowly. “Weeds in the mind are all those distractions that interfere with the flow. Such as, wasting your time worrying about expectations and whether you measure up to them. Just do something fun, rather than feeding the weeds. It really is that simple.”
“Thanks.” Just to troll her a little in return for her unsolicited criticism, even though I had to admit to myself it was helpful, I asked, “Are you something fun, or are you a weed?”
Kass laughed out loud. “Either or both, of course!”
