Are your eyes open or closed?
Poetry Oracle: Week of May 29th
Welcome back to the Self Love Confidential Poetry Oracle, where the universe sends you the message you need to hear by way of a poem from one of my books. I’ll select the weekly poem(s) by trusting my intuition, the very thing I hope you’ll start to do as a member of this self love community.
If it’s stressing you out that 2023 is almost halfway over, this oracle is for you.
I spent Memorial Day weekend with my family in Idyllwild, CA. If you’re unfamiliar with Idyllwild* (as I was) it’s a charming mountain town where pine trees, quaint cabins, endless thrifting opportunities and smiling locals abound. I didn’t realize how much I needed to get away from the hustle and bustle of my everyday life until we got there. You see, I’ve been watching the calendar both anticipating and dreading June. So many different obligations coming to a head all at once, while at the same time dropping me into the month each year when I think to myself, Wow — the year is half over. How did that happen and what do I have to show for it?
On the way home from Idyllwild, my son Teddy (5) said something that completely shifted my perspective on June, my month of existential dread. We were about to embark on the 2.5 hour drive home and he asked me, “Does time move faster when my eyes are open or closed?” You see, he was debating whether or not to nap. I answered him honestly, “Time passes just as quickly or slowly regardless of whether your eyes are open or closed.” He chose a nap, while I started to wonder: Have my eyes been open or closed this year? Which brings me to today’s Poetry Oracle:
Self Love Poetry, page 11.
This year will move forward regardless of whether my eyes are open or closed. But my experience of time, my ability to say I lived and felt my life as it unfolded, depends wholly on me. Will I let expectations, fear, complaining, perfection and guilt close my eyes? Will I take a nap through my life and then wake up in June and wonder how I got here? Or will I instead choose gratitude, trust, appreciation, authenticity and self love? What will you choose?
Together, can we transform a half year lost, into a half year lived?
*By the way — idyll is not equal to idle (doing nothing). “An idyll is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the Idylls.” No wonder I like Idyllwild so much — it is named after the very style of poetry, that makes up much of my book The Shift. If me being in Idyllwild this weekend wasn’t divine magic, I don’t know what is.