Take Your Time, Babe

"Take your time, babe
It's not as bad as it seems
You'll be fine, babe
It's just some rivers and streams
In between you and where you want to be."
— Glen Hansard

I am reflecting on the wonderful musician Glen Hansard, who passed away a few days ago. I've noticed that typically I don't really get caught up with individual celebrities, and yet sometimes there is someone who stays with me, and he was one of those individuals. I don't think I fully realized the place he had in my life until after his passing. As I found myself reflecting, I noticed there was a history there.

When my husband and I met back in 2014, we were both excited to discover that we loved his music. I also discovered that my husband and his mother bonded over his music, just the way my mother, father, sister, and I did as well. From the many shows we attended, to singing and dancing with my husband to his music, to noticing his philanthropic work and his heart, and my husband walking down the aisle to one of his songs on our wedding day, I realized that his music had quietly accompanied so many meaningful moments of my life. It wasn't something I thought much about at the time, but looking back, I can see that he had been there all along and had created an impact in my life. After his passing, I've been feeling strangely close to him.

A human whom I've never personally met, but have witnessed from afar, in person, behind a screen, through the speakers around me, and through the echoes of my mind as I replay and recall his song.

Glen, you are missed and loved.

Almost at the same time, I've been reflecting on legacy, extraordinariness, and beauty in humanity. Whenever I find myself wondering about people, I almost always find myself looking toward the natural world. Somehow, it helps me understand us.

Nature, the muse.

I once heard a riddle: What presents itself boldly but never asks to be seen?

I was stumped, and when the word nature was revealed, I felt chills. The muse who never asks to be a muse.

In a natural state, in the truest form, I believe is where beauty is witnessed. When one is allowed to just be, one will grow into their truest form.

Lately, I have been feeling immense gratitude for where I am in my life, who I am, and have felt so much abundance around me. This does not mean an absence of challenge, and at the same time, there is a sense of ease. There is poetry in living with love. Tears are welling up as I write this. Is it love or is it acceptance that provokes this beautiful experience? I may not know exactly how to put this into words, and I may not know where I will be later on, nor what challenges will be presented, but right now, I feel fine. I feel good. And I am in awe of this.

Not too long ago, there was a part of me that was feeling really scared. It was a period of some months accumulating, feeling confused and doubtful of myself: my purpose, what I'm meant to do. I was focused on comparisons and all of that whirlwind stuff that can get stuck inside. I remember thinking, This is not me. This is not really who I am.

I may write about how all of this integrated into me and the learning lessons that came from this and led me to where I am today, but I will just say that the greatest thing I learned from this period of time was to embrace my own truths. There was peace in realizing that beneath all of the questioning, there was something that had never really left me. Love. Not a blind optimism or a denial of pain. Not an invitation to simply "just love." Rather, a willingness to stay in relationship. To remain open to life as it is. To stay with joy, grief, uncertainty, beauty, and even the parts of myself I wished I could hurry past. And a genuine love for being alive. A love for this wild and beautiful experience of being human. I realized that perhaps I don't need to spend so much energy searching. Maybe my work is simply to stay in relationship with what I already know to be true and allow that love to guide me.

I am reminded of something Herman Hesse said:

"I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books. I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it isn't sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the lives of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves."

There is so much beauty in life.

The beauty in anxiety.
The beauty in salty tears.
The beauty in the mystery.
The beauty of discovery.
The beauty of support.
The beauty of laughter.
The beauty in grief.
The beauty of you.

And it's okay.

It's okay to turn towards yourself and be in relationship with what exists within you.

No matter what it is.

It's all okay.

I came across something else Glen said:

"I choose to believe that there is good in people and that everything is a lesson. Our place on Earth is to go deeper, to somehow get wiser. To have spirit."

That's where I am right now. Feeling spirit. Feeling in my own spirit even if I don't know it all. Even if my humble soul just feels this pure joy without knowing what it means, without dissecting it for meaning and without comparison. Knowing that there is so much ahead of me, knowing that I may go through this period of doubt again in a different way, and being okay with who I am today, in this moment, and trusting.

And maybe that's what I've been reflecting on as I think about Glen. How one person can touch so many lives, many of whom they never knew. I wonder if, at the heart of it, it was simply love. A person living from what was true to them. A person sharing what was already within them. 

Maybe that is enough. 

Maybe that is how we leave something behind. Not by trying to become extraordinary, but by allowing ourselves to live wholeheartedly and trusting that love has a way of traveling farther than we could ever know.

Like nature, it is non striving, not asking to be admired. It simply just is.

Take your time.

It's okay.

I'm up for the rivers and streams in between.

— Imuri