Nature claiming spaces!

There was this excerpt that I wanted to refer to, but I have been unable to find it again. Perhaps, it was what I found pieces of, which my mind imagined stitched into one. Anyway, this one is for Decembers.  

Honestly, I have been afraid of Decembers for some years now. I still am. Just that I also realise how brave, tender and self-regulatory I have become. I also have some AoDs, hopefully the next year would be around intentionally making more time for myself. And in that journey, there would perhaps still be literature along with the presence of people who the heart cherishes deeply. 

Rilke, who breathed his last almost a century back, insists "..we must trust what is difficult, everything alive trusts in it. Everything in nature grows and defends itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition." For, he continues, "why shut off any uneasiness or misery, since we don't know what these conditions are doing inside us.. Let us not persecute ourselves with questions about their beginning or end. So, the fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it. We are in the midst of transitions and we wished for nothing so much as to change."

So, here is to claiming spaces violently, fiercely, and also, tenderly with all our vulnerability in its shining glory, following the footsteps of nature. A few frames from this year's yearning for a life well lived. For Maria Popova reflects, "freedom from suffering is found not in thick skin or cold reason, but in a tender heart that can fully feel the pulp of the difficult and does not judge the imperfect in you or another person.. a heart singularly patched with the passage of time which changes state as if by magic ✨."

Erdrich has been warning us, "Life is going to break us, not even solitude can protect us. We are here to love, to feel, to risk our heart.. to be swallowed up." When we are again at the precipice of life, may Mary Oliver soothe our wounded soul: "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your arrival in the family of things."

With love, tenderly

R