Groundedness

Umea asked me if I was ever fun. An old friend asked me what I did for fun. A new friend told me how he fills his days with joy now that he is retired. 

I have a new answer: tennis. To be more specific, tennis lessons. Turns out, I do not like playing matches, but boy do I love drilling! I've been doing it for several summers now, and this year, I seemed to come into my own. 

And the other things I fantasized about when picturing my retirement were similarly active - riding my bike, going for hikes, running. Turns out that what's fun is moving my body. 

How ironic when what I prioritize is being in my head. 

 It's so easy to get lost in there. 

When we talk about grounding ourselves, we so often mean in our bodies. Moving our breath from shallow to deep. Settling our weight into our hips. 

The metaphor for grounding to me has always been the rootedness of a tree - slow growth outward to grasp the earth and hold on, hold onto more and more as you grow. But today, listening to a meditation about courage, the metaphor the woman used was lighting, and I realized lighting grounds, too. A flash of electricity that connects sky to earth with violence and awesome beauty. There and then gone. A strike. 

I had asked some people at a party on 4th of July when they felt grounded in who they were. My friend's mother said - "Oh, very early. I was lucky to have people who mentored me toward leadership." This matches what I knew of her but was not the answer I was hoping to hear. But today, after telling that story, my friend said, "Sure, she felt grounded early, but she never felt free." She could never jump into a new situation, travel to Europe by herself. She was rooted to her spot in the world but didn't see much of it as a result. 

And so I now have 2 metaphors for groundedness that give me more freedom, more hope that whatever I am feeling is what I am supposed to be feeling - connecting to the here and now, digging deep and wide - and branching out (oops, still tree metaphor!) because I feel safe in who I am and so can leap into something new, strike out in a new direction and see what there is to see. 

For today, this feels revelatory. And enough.