Those who ask: A reflection
Q&A with yourself
Spoken Rendition of “Those who ask”.
Inspiration
For a few years, my family and I rented a small Michigan cabin on the shore of Lake Michigan in the transition from late spring to early summer for a time of relaxation and reconnection. It is a beautiful part of America, with sandy beaches, clear water, massive sand dunes and beautiful valleys. I was fortunate for a couple of those years to spend a week in that cabin by myself, prior to the time with my family. With days of uninterrupted space to hike, paddleboard, swim, meditate and reflect, those days were precious to me and served as a kind of personal New Year, in that I could look back at the prior year, plan for the next and ask myself many questions that felt like they could be asked when one does not have any time constraints. Inspiration for Those who ask came during that week of solitude in May of 2022.
One of my favorite things to do while in this area is to watch the lake to the west of the house change throughout the day. It is quite typical to see the water change from a glass mirror reflecting the clouds and sky at sunrise to slow, choppy waves, then in the afternoon or as a storm marches across Lake Michigan for large waves wearing white caps to form. The colors are also quite alluring, as they move from deep blue to emerald green to stunning cerulean and eventually to black.
One of my other loves in this area is located just a short walk southeast from the cabin in a stunning marsh nestled in a valley. Tall grasses, beautiful wildflowers, ducks, swans, hummingbirds and red-winged blackbirds greet you as you stroll on a wooden boardwalk created to allow the human species to interact with their natural peers in a minimally disruptive way.
This entire area feels large, expansive and full of truth. These two places in particular stir up big emotions and seem to invite any question I may hold. When I spend time there, I usually bring my own set of questions and allow new ones to come forward, questions that I think many at some point in mid-life ask. Am I spending my time doing something worthwhile? Am I working too hard? Why do I still feel like a child in so many ways? How are my relationships? Am I screwing up my kids? What is the point of all of this? Why does joy feel like it is so evasive? These are questions that may have black and white answers but more often than not are full of nuance that seems to result in contradiction with every turn of the mind. I would like to believe I’m great at holding this nuance and this contradiction in a way that is graceful, but that is probably only true a small portion of the time. I often allow this to settle as confusion, instead of seeing the clarity that it offers.
A charge to myself is to show up wherever I am and stay open to the questions that present themselves to me. Some of those questions are spoken, some are felt and some are journaled. Sometimes an answer comes from a partner, a friend or a page. But I’m learning that very often the biggest, most beautiful questions are asked not with the voice but somewhere deep within, and the old beings such as a great lake or a marsh in a valley, who are millions of years old and still changing every minute, contain wisdom that one must touch to learn.
Touch your questions. Touch the wisdom you find.
Brian
If you missed the “A Poem” post of Those who ask, you can read it here!
