My Amalfi Coast mug by the fireplace this morning.
It’s morning. I had a good night sleep that seemed to wash away lots of the physical pain and discomfort of yesterday. After reiki-ing myself in bed for a bit, I wake up to a sweet morning routine of winter in Italy.
Tidying up my room, coffee, fire. My favorite is when there are little incandescent bits of wood from the night before, that help me start the fire in the morning. My mom knows this and tries to always add a piece of wood on the dying coals right before she goes to bed.
I have a technique, when the bright coals are very small, as they were today. I place the driest, smallest piece of wood close to the incandescent marble-size pieces and blow on them slowly and consistently, with what we call a sciusciaturu a metal pipe with a tiny-tiny spout. While the larger pieces of wood are all around, I have no expectation for them to light, until it’s time. It’ll takes a few minutes for the coals to burn the small pieces of wood. This morning, about ten minutes. Once the smaller piece of would is also bright and incandescent, I can blow energetically on the whole lot and enjoy a much bigger flame. As the bigger pieces blaze with fire, it will offer its comforting crackle, and the flames will begin to show its variety of colors, yellow, red, blue.
This morning, I timed the lighting of the first coals, with the coffee, religiously-moka,;’?
maker. By the time I came back with my caffelatte or as Americans know it simply latte, I was ready to blow on the bigger incandescent coals, and enjoy the crackling with the warm drink, all my senses enhanced, the flavor of the latte and the visual candy of my mug, bought on the Amalfi coast, blue with a huge yellow lemon, as a reminder of the sweetest lemons on earth, and my ears, loving the crackling and the whisking of the fire…
This way of setting my morning fire reminds me of one of my biggest lessons from these covid years, being me, instead of pushing me. This 100 day challenge presents me with the challenge of living this principle while continuing to write.
I’m pretty sure I carried a low-level, hidden, undiagnosed depression since my teens. My senior year I many days a week sleeping all afternoon/evening then woke up at 5am in the morning trying to jam in my homework, missing my 7am bus, and then at 7:45 running a ½ mile to a spot under a bridge where I could hitchhike a ride to school. I lived in a village of 3000 people in Italy. I knew most people, or most people knew me. I had been a good student in school, so the morning rushes became my routine to keep up my grades, but also appearances. I remember being a child and being told “Don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself, do something!” I’m grateful for the teaching now, for the many ways it has served me, and in many ways, it hasn’t.
When covid hit, and my worklife was up in the air, at first, I continued my morning routine. I’ve been a business owner working from home for 13 years, so the routine wasn’t new. Wake up, wash up, get dressed, coffee, computer. Sometimes a walk in the park before the coffee. Sometimes yoga and meditation. Sometimes motivational videos. I created like crazy in those few months, I created webinars, a certificate program, started writing an article, did a video series with a friend. None of these things were ever completed. They wouldn’t feel “right” later on.
One day, maybe two months into the pandemic, I heard my inner voice say: What if you stopped pushing? My elders had often told me how I pushed too hard and that life would have another rhythm if I just let it evolve and flow at its own pace. So I tried. For a few months, I got out of bed, when I felt ready to get out of bed. I stopped pushing myself to do so.
The more I gave up pushing, I realized that many of my practices, yoga, meditation, motivational videos, even walking, were just another way of pushing myself to have energy, when I actually didn’t. So for about a year, I gave up meditation. I wanted to simply be what I was, without trying to change my state.
That’s when it came. First the grief. Then the anger. Then more grief. I spent many days with many tears. I let myself be in pajamas all day. I let myself be wherever I was.
The pushing was fear-drive. I was scared that if I didn’t push, I’d give up on everything, life, myself, my contribution. The release was ongoing. But it didn’t last forever. One of my biggest lessons was, there is an end to the grief. It doesn’t last forever. And I didn’t die. And I didn’t get stuck in bed forever.
On the other side, I’d wake up because I’d feel a surge in my body to create, a love of life, a love of myself and even a tad of excitement for what the new day would bring. It’s creating beyond the fear from being alive, not from the fear of falling apart.
Just like the coals….
I don’t expect small coals to give me a huge fire. At least not immediately. But nurturing them gently will go a long way.
The fire can burn much brighter, in due time…
[As I re-read this piece almost ready to publish—the part about the crackling fire I hear a BOOM! A bunch of ash flew out of the fireplace. Luckily I wasn’t burned. A little scary, nothing dangerous, something placed in the fire that shouldn’t have been. Is this relevant to the writing?… Maybe this… not pushing still leaves plenty of space for the unpredictable. I have an illusion that not pushing everything will stay the same. Something like that. Change is the nature of life. How arrogant of me to think that I must push things to change at all.]