Letters From The Barn: A Fine Breeze
In the mornings, I wake and stretch. Sometimes once, sometimes seventeen times. Sometimes I stretch so far over, my toes wake up in China and my derriere finds its home in France. But, those are good mornings. The aches and pains I experience prove to me that I can survive each day with its slings and arrows, get up despite pain, and then do something about it.
Not eliminate it. I'm not sure that's possible. (Though if you find a way, don't be shy about letting me know.) But, I can make it bearable.
How? By stretching into the pain. Sort of like leaning forward into the wind as you walk down the lane on a terrible day. The wind is doing it's best to blow you over backwards. By leaning forward, walking nearly in half and in quite a comical style, you have defeated the wind in its quest to send you rolling backward along the sidewalk.
No, it's not a position you'd like to keep in for your entire life or even more than a few hundred feet until you hit the windbreak. But the windbreak is coming. There is always one just up ahead.
Stretching in the morning is like that. Leaning into the pain just long enough til it disappears on its own. A good stretch reminds your body of what it can endure and that pain is just a momentary event.
True, there will be more pain throughout the day and let's don't even talk about the end of the day when it rears up on its hindlegs and growls at you all night long for everything you've tried to do that day. But, in the morning, you can drink a cup of coffee, do a little stretch and build a little altar to your day by balancing on one foot. Pain rests in one of your hands, a strong healthy life in the other. They meet in the middle, in your balance.
Stand there, with a gentle, flowing movement throughout your body, and you may even start a wise, flowing breeze throughout your day. True, a powerful wind may come out of nowhere to knock you over, but while crawling on your hands and knees to stand back up again is not the most glorious position to be seen in, it does get the job done. Which, at its heart, is continuing on your journey. Even if that's a slow, simple one that started with standing in one place, coffee cup balanced in one hand and what may happen the rest of the day in the other. Bon Voyage.
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Author: Meriwether O'Connor
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