Enough again

Last night we drove to the beach and ate fish near the Pier. On the way home the orange glow through the trees on the blueberry fields was something I had never seen before. The rolling hills through Lakelands looks like the setting for a magical fairy tale. Newville Lake that is usually the deepest blue was red with the reflection of the sky. It was all about the sky, the light from it was changing the world around me. A drive I have done hundreds of times looked completely different. 

This proves to me that we can do the same thing day after day and still expect new things. That the world is being painted by our presence in it as well as our experiences. Yesterday after walking with my friend and talking about two invites to travel, with of which I declined, I felt as if perhaps I was not enough. I feel this once or twice a week, and it passes quickly. Basically I am content. 

So I text her and told her that sometimes my unwillingness to travel makes me feel small. It makes me feel like I am letting my world get too small. And then I go for piece of fish and on the way home I understand that being able to really see what is in front of you is in no way not enough. It is in no way small. And I feel restored. My self doubt turns to certainty, at least for a few days. Or until another invite comes.

So much of my life comes from my making, my creative life, from beauty. It is a sustaining force in my everyday. It takes the ordinary and gives it a glow. And I wake up every morning looking for this, thinking about how I can transform my own small world into something larger so that it resonates. 

I know a small world is not really that small. 

There are many things in life that are small and seemingly unimportant but without them I would be lonely. My simple routines, the ability to hold my toothbrush, to cook a meal from what is in the pantry, to walk down the same road everyday. The things we take for granted, the smell of bread baking, purple asters showing the last bloom of fall, the sweet peaks of spruce across the yard. These things sustain me and allow me to do the work I was meant to do. 

So small is okay with me most of the time. Occasionally, I imagine myself on a retreat in Italy drinking a glass of red wine, but mostly I imagine myself here on this land in this place watching it transform itself from season to season. I think how grateful I am to wake up well and look at a bunch of brush and scrub and felling the comfort of belonging. And I am so lucky that an evening drive through the county does for me what another person might need a trip to Paris for. And that is how I feel this morning. Tonight may be different. 

Then I may feel the need to go somewhere big, to feel something different. It will come in a wave of "I should be more. I should be someone different than who I am." And I will text my friend, the one who loves to travel and she will say, "I love you as you are."  And because of this I will be enough again for a little while.