Do you see it?
If you look closely and squint through the sun you can see what I am trying to hear, what I need to hear, so I can listen.
Isn’t that how our senses work? Like a team. I couldn’t chose one to lose if asked. Why do we even ask that? I need them all to work.
Try to eat sushi with your eyes closed. It makes for an interesting change in the way it feels and tastes. I don’t know why I picked sushi. But if I said peanut butter and jelly it sounds kind of boring, unless it’s crunchy peanut butter…
Listen to music with your eyes closed. It blocks the vision of the moment to allow for the feeling of what the music brings to mind. Take away the traffic and you can hear what you need to listen, to feel the music. Don’t drive with your eyes closed🤦♀️.
If I plug my ears, all that happens is, I can’t hear anything as well or eat my sushi without my hands. But I can still see. So I can probably still listen, if I had to. And want to.
Many of us are visual learners. We need to see it not to believe it, but to hear it, then understand it. If we aren’t presented with something to see, it’s hard to hear. Not just hear, but listen. We often say “show me”. We tend to like to read over trying to hear something. We like maps, graphics, charts and images. We tend to remember a face and not a name. I close my eyes when it gets too loud, not my ears.
I looked way out into the tree tops. To the horizon, to the sun that was trying blind me, to see if I could hear what I was trying to listen to.
What was it?
Myself.
We get so lost in our moments, lost in others moments, we get noisy. Too loud to hear the most important person to listen to.
I’ve been lost in my grief. It’s been like a wave, a calm, a fear, a gain, a void…a squiggle, to use a word my second grader uses when she has to write a story from a “squiggle” drawing. “Everything is squiggle-y” she says. Grief has been squiggle-y.
I can’t hear my dad anymore. Not the way I used to. So I went after a place to listen. To see if I could still hear him in any way. I can. He is right there. See?
Grief is a heavy weight. When we surround ourselves with any piece of our natural world it can lighten the weight. Even while carrying it on our backs😊.It could be a garden, a long hike, potted plants above your kitchen sink, herbs in your bathroom, a single orchid, or a snake plant in your corner. Take away the noise of the busy world, the rules, the traffic and you are left with this. Just you, and what you see, to listen.
🍃 Heather
Aspenleaf 