I want to live vividly, don’t you?

I get the idea that life is not a dress rehearsal, I really do.

But sometimes that call comes along with some sneaky ‘shoulds’ attached. 

Should make the best of our one go at it.  That one take.  Should make sure it’s critically acclaimed, a crowning achievement, the best performance of ‘ourselves’ that we can possibly muster.

And that can make learning how to do the downtime well, and vividly, a challenge.  Something I definitely need to practice.

I certainly gave it my best shot last weekend: I spent several days in the Yorkshire Dales. It was perfect bliss: the company of two dear women friends; fabulous food; outings to a couple of fantastic eateries:  Betty’s Tearooms and Salt’s Diner; walking and later lazing in the sunshine; a totally irreverent and non-competitive, laugh-till-I-cried game of Trivial Pursuit; and, as a special activity for Saturday afternoon, sushi making. Oh, and a movie… in our PJs.

On our river walk, I saw this wall. I immediately warmed to the layers of colour and wanted to photograph them, the a heartbeat later I fell in love with the whole breaking-through, reaching-for-the-sky, excitedly-moving-into-the-unknown, bundle of metaphors it sent flashing through my mind.

I know I need that down time, that time out.  It helps me to notice those wake up calls, those tumbles of metaphors that burst through my head (and splatter over blog posts…)

But there are other times when I just want the down time.  To do nothing too much at all.  Just to potter and putter and be. 

I haven’t learned, yet, how that fits with living vividly.  It feels awkward, like I’m letting myself down, or ignoring that wake up call.  Yet I know I need it.  (Know you probably need it too.  Guess we all do.)

It’s part of being more fully alive.  Part of the way we break down those walls, and learn how to walk on through…

Do you have any tips on building in the down time part of the life lived out loud?

(with thanks to Joanna Young - I’m so looking forward to the Tell Your Story Women’s Writing Retreat  in June)

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Like me, like you
Snowdrops
Find themselves stuck in hard places.
Hostile places.

Like me, like you
They have an instinct to grow
And so they push against the frozen soil
And finally, unseen, pop out
Into the sunshine.

Whereupon
Like me, like you
They are snowed on, iced over, pelted with hailstones,
Stung by driving rain

Yet still they grow

Until one day
When winter has long dragged on,
Far too long,
One day,
With a silent peal of soft, white bells
They suddenly appear, transformed.

And look:
Their delightful presence is discreet
Their proud flowers, slightly bowed
They are not sunflowers, gloriously tall, shining out across the fields.
They have simply grown into
Themselves.

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These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. Virginia Woolf

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