Who were you?

Last week I went on a mini getaway. Just for the day. I drove a few hours west to a State park for a hike. As its winter in Texas things were a bit brown but it was also oddly warm mid day by the time I arrived so it was a strange choice to go for a hike at this time. But it was really about leaving my own world, my current self for a while. And earlier this week I repeated the process staying overnight in the spacious rolling hills.

As I drove and after a call with a friend I attempted to put on an audio book, something enlightening and educational. I can multi task I think. I feel bored and wonder why I am even in the car for 2 plus hours to be somewhere for a few hours. I put on some music, an artist my mother listened to when I was little. A folk artist who emerged from the Austin 90’s scene. Her voice, nostalgic in its tone and an absolute time stamp for moments in my life, brought me back. And as I listened and drove, I unwound in ways I didnt know I fully needed too.

I used to love driving, but so often my drives are in traffic now, so its changed the way I feel. So much of driving is stressful. But as I left large cities behind, and it became a landscape of spacious although winter grey and brown fields, I remembered why I once loved it.

I was surprised as I drove longer, however and I left the familiar present world to landscapes of my memory that I felt a rise of sadness. This feeling was not an overwhelming purge but a subtle trickle of a flow that could best be described as longing or a missing of something. But who did I miss?

As the road wound and twisted through small towns it became clear, I missed me.

I missed pieces of me that existed before I knew so much. I missed me before social media and internet content began to affect how I felt about the world. I missed me who would drive and listen to music laughing with friends. I missed the version of me that dreamed of what life could be. I missed the slower brain wave states I lived in before our urgent society.

I don’t desire to go back though. Because I am aware of things I never knew before that I like. I have powerful gifts and a beautiful life, one that is oddly not even very hurried or stressful compared to many. And I very much do not desire to go back to learning for 6 hours a day in school. But I wouldnt mind recess and lunch with my friends again.

This longing was short lived and turned more in to a remembering. I remembered road trips with my family, my dad driving and glancing at my in the rear view mirror as everyone but he and I slept. He drove and I stared out the window as the world rolled by. My original scrolling, which actually allowed my mind to wander, to day dream and to create. I was in a trance in a way.

I remember always sitting behind my mom because she would lean her seat back to nap and I was the littlest, so it was both practical and how the hierarchy of siblings worked in those days. My mom would sometimes roll over on to her stomach and talk to me (90s car safety was wild). I could feel her calm contended side showing up because she loved trips and looking at me and my precious smallness, her face so close to mine. I could feel the intimacy of it.

This isnt how I think of her now.

I remembered being sticky in the car with ice cream cones after lake days in the texas summer. The smell of wet dog, the car littered with our trash, sunburn on cheeks and the physical peace that comes from swimming all day in the sun.

The mess and smell would bother me now.

There were little pieces of me scattered all over the side of the highway, like wildflower seeds, and as time passed they blossomed in to full experiential memory.

These pieces didn’t have a perfect life but she didn’t know to assess it otherwise. She didn’t know that certain things were right and wrong, she was already in the field beyond them. ( A reference to a Rumi quote for my friends who love spiritual quotes)

She didnt think about how much sugar was in her ice cream or if the dairy was bad for her stomach, she didnt try to get the right amount of steps in the day. Little Avery never worried about the president or the environmental impact of all things. She did care about how others felt and the ways she impacted them though.

You could of course say, that is what childhood is. But that creates the assumption that adulthood is the opposite. It is worry and concern and right and wrong. Adulthood is fallibilty in every direction.

But of course I don’t believe that. I believe we have just forgotten something in our modern mental programs. We have become obsessed with righting wrongs and knowing “the truth” and being aware in such a way that we no longer know how to feel joy as we once did.

It is very useful to be aware in the ways your life might have created negative patterns but its damning to think that is all there is. And while people wouldn’t admit it, if thoughts were dialogued and handed for review most peoples would show a trend towards the wrongness of things.

So today I ask you, who were you before you knew there could be wrongs?

Who were you before you were told that your parents werent perfect and how did you love them?

Who were you before you knew the daunting and ever expanding health rules to be an optimal human?

Who were you before you had to meet a level of perfection? Before striving?

Who were you when your job was to exist in whatever expression you were in the moment?

I don’t expect you to forget all your wisdom and learnings of life nor to be vulnerable to the negative impressions of others but I invite you to balance your knowings with radical child like acceptance of the moment and finding the fun in it again.

I know some of us wont even remember a before. Some would have to remember infancy or before life but I want you to imagine that at some moment someone held you and you needed to do nothing but exist. Even if for a second.

You could remember you’re not broken, and that there is goodness in this day. You could let go and see how life flows for you.

You could do that again. You could stop fighting the current and just show up curious. You could look at what you like and don’t like and move towards the things you prefer. You could love imperfect people again with out it affecting you in the same way. You could do all of this but not give away your power like a child. That could be what adulthood is. The choice to love life in spite of its hurts. The empowered decision to dream and hope for goodness even knowing past pain. Adulthood could be radically and boldly choosing openness not because you are naive but because you arent.

Don’t worry you can still change those patterns that might have held you back but remember the only hold they have is stopping you from being in your true self, your home of authentic existence. And like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz the power to go home has been with you the whole journey. You just needed to find it for yourself.

So I hope you return home with everything that you have learned and take the courageous choice to release it all and to dare to let your heart be childlike and curious again this time letting your own heart creating the strongest impressions and not the hurts of others.

In childlike wonder,

Avery