labyrinths & lupines & thanks

This morning, with sun and nothing pressing to do, I looked up information on creating labyrinths. While tracing or planting our own labyrinth is not the most practical of things for us to do, especially outdoors and in this pretty bad and typically cold weather, it is something I want to create one day.

Lately I’ve been reading, hearing, overhearing or witnessing people tell one another: That is so you! Sometimes this is addressed to me, other times it’s something general and in the air… I’ve been wondering what this means with more intensity recently, because I haven’t really been feeling like myself. I wonder what that even means? Who am I, really? And who are you? And are we really different?

Instead of identifying, and thus strongly attaching, ourselves to certain ephemera: interests, likes, personality traits, states of being, etc., aren’t we supposed to be trying to transcend all this stuff? I imagine a lot of people may disagree with such a view and decide it kind of airy. But what I mean is, the more names, designations and identity traits we tape to ourselves, the more bound we are to things that don’t really matter… not in the end. (Here I imagine someone completely wrapped up in duct tape of varying colors and snug beneath pieces of paper with lots of nouns and adjectives—no verbs, unable to move.)

The more we try to differentiate ourselves from and disown each other, the further we get from the truth. Which lies, I believe, somewhere more in the realm of union. We like bad news and gory details, mostly because we are capable of such things. We like to complain or talk smack, because we prefer to distance ourselves from certain people, behaviors and ways of living. But all that really does is sow negativity seeds into our hearts. The seeds, of course, work as magnets, so we end up attracting exactly what we claim to abhor (or at least dislike).

How we label ourselves happens consciously and subconsciously, and we tend to make the labels negative or positive, instead of accepting ourselves and the things around us as they are. In this way, even the “positive” carries an implied “negative” charge with it.

So what does this have to do with me not feeling myself. There’s something bluer these days and so much more earthbound. I’ve been feeling frustrated lately, and fighting against this frustration instead of… well, embracing it as the fleeting thing that it is. Everyone feels sad or far away or discombobulated or aggravated sometimes. But fighting with our emotions usually has the effect of honing them, knife-sharp. And since it’s hard not to succumb to knives, we spiral further into this place and begin to identify with our emotions, and so they grow.

Lucky for me, Serkan stays patient and is more of a problem-solver than a problem-maker. He tells me exactly what I would say to me if I could at said moment. And since I say similar things to other people , I am able to listen to him. He talks to the part of me that knows I’m being a fool, not to the part that is in the middle of being dramatically foolish.

This morning I was looking for labyrinths, some activity on a path inward and back out again. Breathing. Full of breath and thanks. Since the sun was shining, Serkan and I went for a bike ride on the muddy dirt roads. We visited our land and planted lupines in a line along one side of the property. Two chubby, super cute, but overwhelmingly urine-scented, puppies accompanied us. In a year or so, the lupines will start flowering and seeding, whether we’re here to see them or not.