Written by Ruby Morales
Did I just walk around aimlessly in a circle for 20 minutes or did I embark on a cyclical journey through life. I did BOTH!
Cycles and examining life through different concepts of “time” has been heavy on mind. I’ve been spending the entire week at my mom’s house, doing (what feels like) the same thing everyday and because of this wild pandemic, my sense of the future has low-key disappeared. As a Virgo… having no plans, and no idea of what’s to come IS STRESSFUL and it’s flat out ANXIETY… just pure anxiety. But it has really given me the platform and space to question my relationship with time. I have been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass for the past 4 months (which honestly I will probably reread for the rest of my life) and she made a beautiful statement that helped me contextualize what I have been feeling, believing and rediscovering for myself, “Time as objective reality has never made much sense to me. It’s what happens that matters… If there is meaning in the past, and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment.” We go through cycles, just as the earth goes through cycles. It’s not about how long anything takes or the length of each section within the cycle, but it’s about what happens. WHAT HAPPENS is what matters. So in my aimless walk: perceiving it as an aimless, wasteful walk around the house that took time away from my process of becoming a famous and successful dance artist, is really not helpful! Instead, I can think about the time I spent with my plants, the visit I gave my dog, a quick laugh I exchanged with my mom, the vitamin D that I received from the sun, and the mental and spiritual grounding I embarked on during my walk around the house. AND my stress about my disappearing future… well the meaningfulness of it is captured in the present. Without the present, I would have no future. I hold potential energy in the now, NOT in the tomorrow. So how I feel and act now IS what’s exciting about my future.
Cheers to cycles, walking ones, earth's ones and to be honest menstrual ones!