Connection, Perfection and Planting Flowers

Do you ever get the antsy feeling that you should be somewhere? I’m not thinking of the time I forgot about my tax appointment or skipped my client’s massage. I mean the in-general feeling that the life you are currently living is not your own. That you and your life should be somewhere else. Another place or time or life. Would it sound crazy to say I miss it? I miss a life I have yet to own?

This is how I’m feeling these days. As if I’m walking around in a life not my own. I’ve hijacked the bundled cells of another soul and am sitting rather uncomfortably in the tight squeeze. How did I end up in these cramped quarters? IwantoutIwantoutIwantout!

I feel this deep propensity toward a life I seem unable to create. A life of simplicity, of beauty, of nature and art and music and connection and and and. But it’s more than arduous to create this picture perfect life of beauty while surrounded by dreary, dry, dead domain. This city! My hometown is sucking the life out of me. Its lack of options too often locks us inside and creates a dependency on an electronic lifestyle – a version of living vicariously through another person’s blog. The television, the video games, the computers…they all feel like static in my hair; annoying, frustrating and nearly impossible to figure out how to manage.

I want less stuff. More movement and flow. Less noise. More harmonious dancing with the Earth. More connection to Spirit with less distraction. More G-d and less Ego.

We text, we email, we instant message, we blog, we chat on our cells while we run our errands. But we rarely sit down and really link hearts with someone else. The pool of connection has gotten broad and vast, but shallow. I want the Laura Ingalls Wilder version of life. Simple, peaceful and (can I wear this word out?) connected. Instead I feel like the diver who’s air line has been severed.

:sigh:

Justin and I recently had an opportunity to escape. An offer to live in the middle of nowhere and take care of a ranch. The entire scenario was made for us. Z even fell in love with the idea. But we are strapped down to a home we can’t sell in a city we dislike and can’t escape just yet. We allowed our dream life to pass us by. It wasn’t all sad. I simply knew it wasn’t time yet. I want so deeply to be where I’m meant to end up but I know I’m not meant to end up there yet.

Z and I tried something new today. We “powered down” as we call it, for most of the day. We agreed on 2pm as the first hour we could turn on anything electronic and instead spent the morning reading, creating with clay and playing games. And (thankfully) we both really enjoyed it. We connected. Not just with each other, but with our home and ourselves. Z had about an hour of laying on the cushions on the floor, deep in private thought. It was a step in the right direction, one that we will attempt to implement regularly.

Another moment of connection happened yesterday at our unschoolers park day. The babes and kids and tweens running in the grass and climbing trees; their voices hollering across the breeze. The barefoot moms crocheting, sharing and laughing in the shade with one eye on the tribe around us. I just sat back and reveled in the perfection. We have a lot of those moments together, us Life Learners. We’ve all toyed with the idea of a commune, a way to surround ourselves with as many moments of beauty as possible with as few distractions as necessary. But weather is something we can’t seem to agree on so a location has yet to be ascertained. :]

Oooh, I wish to greedily run in the right direction, leaving the path behind and just get to where I’m meant to end up. But you can’t skip the road needed to travel to a destination. Half the “getting there” relies on what you learn along the way. So I’m trudging the route and trying to smell as many flowers along the side as possible. And planting a few myself for those in step behind me.

I’m getting there. I’m still practicing the accepting of that, but at least I’m not jumping too far ahead of myself.