Pau Ponders is a free newsletter. If you would like to support my work, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. This is a reader-supported offering and I am so grateful for your presence here. Please feel free to share parts of this newsletter that resonate with you on social media or send to someone you love. Thank you for being here.
The other day, I experienced two perfect days in a row. Licked awake by doggo kisses. Slow mornings filled with poetry, a delicious warm beverage, sunlight frolicking across the floor of where I sat. I went on a walk where inspiration oozed out of my throat, then mouth, splattering onto the page.
I focused in on a blue hue on a house granting me a vision symbolizing my womanhood in the kitchen at breakfast time surrounded by my own porcelain teacups, one of a kind, that same color blue. Then I wrote about it.
I filled these days full of my favorite things. Movement, nature, reading, people watching, gusts of scratchy writing on a scratch pad dedicated to inspired words or phrases, writing a letter at the coffee shop, long meandering walks in the sunshine.
It was to my surprise to notice something like an internal splinter rear its angry and unsatisfied head after almost 48 hours of pure delight. When I listened to the splinter, it questioned my fulfillment and true satisfaction about how I was spending my time. It poked at tender parts inside of me, right above my heart and to the left.
Not only was the splinter agitated but it found it absolutely imperative that I not only listen to it, but believe everything that it was saying. Which, was difficult to do, because the splinter wanted me to doubt my experience and feel inadequate.
It’s almost as if so much contentment and peace threatened the splinter. It didn’t want to be forgotten. It didn’t want me to forget.
The curious thing about this experience is that I was able to observe and witness the splinter from an outside point of view. I got close enough to see it and hear it, but not so close that I mistook it for myself.
It did make me curious though. Why was this thing speaking up about injustice within my pleasure when I am simply enjoying myself? Maybe that was this thing’s problem. Enjoyment is too easy and we must suffer, I imagine it saying. Nothing good comes easy, it growls.
You can imagine the look on my face to look something like that of a shocked pony looking around at his pony friends asking, are you hearing this guy? The absurdity must be shared to dilute the seriousness that the splinter offers as absolute truth.
For the past few weeks I have been having a lot of fun with this notion that there is the matter of fact and then there is the meaning we assign it. In the middle, there is space. Within that space, we have the power to notice what meaning we are assigning to the matter of fact. The matter of fact is that the matter of fact just is, and we make it mean something. Because we have the power to make it mean something, we also have the awareness to notice that we are assigning it meaning in the first place. That space of separation is crucial to the great pause.
The great pause is where our human becomes aware of its capacity to choose, and to choose again. I refer to the great pause as an opening to conscious living and being. It is here that we get to pause and get curious about the narrative that we feel called to weave out of this mostly neutral thing.
Today it’s beautiful outside. The whole city is outside on bikes, with their dogs, and rollerskates. I got off of work today and told myself that I would spend some of my afternoon outside. I should take advantage of this, I thought. It’s so nice out, I really should be outside.
After I got off of work, I headed to the Co Op where I picked out a few snacks. Matcha, Strawberry Vanilla Olipop, Raspberry yogurt. Then I went home. But I’ll tell you the truth, despite having every intention to go outside, I got home from work and couldn’t bring myself to do a gosh darn thing.
I lay on my bedroom floor with my legs up on the wall. Staring into space for the next 45 minutes or so before falling asleep. In this scenario, I can point to the matter of fact, and the meaning that I temporarily assigned it; the matter of fact: it is a beautiful day and I didn’t spend much of any of it outside. The meaning I assigned it: surely, something is wrong with me for that.
As I write this, I am also learning about languishing. A psychology term that ultimately describes feeling “blah.” Not necessarily sad, not necessarily happy. Perhaps a grand neutrality that makes it difficult to choose things that incite joy, or anything at all. There’s an overall feeling of “what’s the point?” A stuck-ness. A sticky-ness. An overwhelming underwhelm.
I am feeling rather similar to what I am learning about languishing. And while I learn, I notice myself fearing what that may mean about me, my future or my destiny. If I’m languishing, surely that must mean I’m doomed, or something is wrong with me. But maybe, I am just experiencing the wide array of humanness that is available to me. Maybe I am just not feeling it.
Earlier I mentioned the Great Pause, which is useful here. Perhaps I don’t have to make meaning out of the internal splinter that poked at me after two days of bliss. Perhaps I don’t have to make meaning out of my current languishing. Perhaps I must not fear what it will mean to publish such intimate details about myself on the Internet.
As a writer, I am consistently coming face to face with the things living and dying inside of me. The questions that pose their own set of questions. I often wonder if I will ever just be able to to be chill about my life. I think the answer is no. I don’t know how to. I must ask myself the questions, I must make the meaning. I must search.
I guess the point I am coming to find through writing this is that I can wonder and search and ponder, and let the answer be an open ended feeling I get to discover bit by bit. Give myself the grace and space to feel what I am experiencing even when it is murky. I am alive and a writer even when it is murky.
And just as I must not censor myself in my depiction of my current frame of reference of the truth, I too must not censor myself in the experiencing of my current frame of reference of the truth.
I didn’t want to write today but I didn’t let that mean that I wouldn’t write.
I didn’t do anything today after I got off of work and I didn’t let that mean something bad about me.
Instead, I am choosing meanings I can learn to trust instead of fear.
I didn’t want to write today and that’s okay because I know that I don’t have to be in the mood to show up for myself. As I am, it is enough.
I didn’t want to do anything today, and that’s okay. I listen to my body when it asks me for rest.
With that, I am grateful for the tools that I have and know and discover on the way. I have a sticky note on my wall, well, many, actually. And one of them reminds me specifically of the space that lives in between the matter of fact and the meaning that I assign it. The space to notice. The space to choose a meaning that supports me on my way.
Where can you find the space to create meaning out of compassion in your world?
Consider sharing this post to bring Pau’s words across worlds among your own.