An old American Indian story begins with "The trees in front of you and the bushes beside you, are not lost. Wherever you are, you are here".
Lately everything I write seems heavy and sometimes with a dark edge. All kinds of existential themes come up when I want to think of a topic to write about. I started worrying about my readers. You already have enough on your plate with all of your own problems and you come to me to find lightness, not more heaviness.
So I made several attempts to write something sparkling about the unfolding spring and the beginning of new life, but this resulted in blogs that seem so insignificant to me that I dare not send them around. This time, I want to stay close to myself. I want to share with you what is really going on inside me while staying true to my authenticity. Who knows, you might find it more helpful than a story about spring.
Because at the moment I am experiencing a feeling of being lost. I know I am right here, but I am not totally sure where that is. In my heart there is pain for what is going on in Gaza, the indescribable human suffering that goes on and on, and which gets worse every day. We all look on helplessly. I feel cheated by the institutions around me. All have failed in holding up their own principles. All of them.
Bit of the feeling Truman must have had in the film "The Truman Show" when he finds out his whole life has been staged. He gets on a boat and sails to the horizon until he sails through a cardboard wall. It was all fake. Dutch politics, all the parties I ever voted for, the EU, the UN, the universal declaration of human rights, the universities I studied at, science, Dutch society, the bakery around the corner, all have failed me.
Because even if you don't want to call it genocide, ethnic cleansing or colonisation, at the least there should have been a unanimous declaration of how unacceptable and inhumane it is what is being done to people and children. And I am feeling devastated by it. The world keeps spinning and I don't know where to go with my pain, frustration and despair. So I breathe in and I breathe out and I write it down... And to know that you are reading it helps me not to feel alone....
There, that already relieves something. Being able to bring myself into the world as I am and feeling that it is ok. I'm not lost, I am simply here. And the "here" shifts from moment to moment. Space slowly opens up for a new landscape within me. The first rays of the sun, the fragile leaves on the tree, the blossom on the ground. Nature has endured so much and each time it breaks itself down and starts again. Always hopeful, always room for growth. Allowing myself to start again each time. Without ignoring what is. Taking a fresh look at what being here means. The here I am in right now. In all the sadness, not denying the beautiful and vice versa. Nature is love and spring shows that there is always hope. Everything grows towards the light.
...And then it became a story about spring after all ;)
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Warm and hopeful greetings,
