The Kentucky State Fair. A riverboat cruise on the Ohio on the Belle of Louisville. Library books. Watching movies. Vacuuming. Physical therapy. Dinner. Music. Feline frolicking. These are just a few of the ways I’ve occupied myself recently instead of watching TV. C. returned a few weeks ago, thus soothing my loneliness and sadness into oblivion. We shifted pretty easily back into our domestic bliss routine.
I’ve also been more introspective than usual lately. It is interesting to me to observe the ways in which my life has changed and continues to change. I am less rigid about things. I am willing to reconsider long-held and deeply-felt convictions. This feels scary, a little. After all, who am I if I am not someone who thinks this or believes that? Is this bad? Is this wrong? Is it okay to change my mind about things? I mean, I’m still me underneath it all. The essence of my identity is the same. But I feel different, changed, enhanced, softened. And I’ve basically had to give myself permission to be different, to change my mind about things, to reconsider what I think about this or about that.
There are ideas about living, and then there’s actual living, so says a sage friend of mine. The gap between these two things, for me, has been widening, and this scared me at first, but now I’m embracing it. I’m trying to, at least.
These musings have little to do with not watching TV, except that perhaps not watching TV facilitates introspection. Perhaps this all sounds cryptic, and maybe I’m still too shy to say outright these things I’m thinking about. But they’re in my mind and in my heart.
Kay Ryan says:
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.–from “Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard”
