the picnic blanket.

In her book Yes Please, Amy Pohler uses a really interesting analogy to describe a time of major change and transition in her life.  She writes it was as though her entire existence was laid out perfectly on a picnic blanket...and all at once someone picked up the corners of the blanket and sent everything flying into the air.

(Highly recommend on Audiobooks - so much funnier in her voice.)

Amy said she felt as if she was just standing there, waiting to see where all the pieces of her life would land, and the uncertainty was paralyzing.

That feeling.  That waiting.

With the safety of a carefully crafted life lost, what do we have left to hold on to?  There are so many unknowns, and everything feels so terribly out of control.  Where do we go for the answers to the countless questions that won't stop swirling around in our heads?

Well it's 2018.  So I guess we turn to the internet.

The infinite wisdom of cyber-spirituality offers us uplifting bite-sized mantras:

• "If you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
• "Nothing will change unless you do."
• "If you want something you've never had, then you must do something you've never done."
• "Be messy and complicated and afraid.  And show up anyway."

And we think:  

"Yes Pinterest!  You are so right.  This is the truth!  This is what I will do!  I will be messy and complicated and afraid and I will show up anyway...just as soon as I finish this conference call and make dinner." 

Meanwhile a little voice whispers from the smallest corner of our soul saying:  'These words can't help you.  They aren't even your words.  Only you know how to exist in a way that honors your truth.'

So we thank the internet for the solid starting point and dig deeper in search of that honest place.  That place inside ourselves that is so raw and so exposed there is nowhere left to go.  No more stones to turn over, no more self doubt, no more feelings to consider, no more options to weigh, no more fucks to give.  

Exhausted, exposed and scared we realize this is it.  This is the time for change.  And so we grab the corners of the blanket, give it a loving shake...and we wait.

We stay still and listen for direction as we watch the pieces of our life fall one by one back down to earth.  Bearing witness to the sequence of events as they unfold, accepting that we can only affect those things which are in our control.  And the rest...well, the rest will just fall where they will.

We think that by a certain age we shouldn't find ourselves in these situations.  It's easier to believe the blanket has been put down, the basket is unpacked, and that goddamn picnic is staying right where it is.  It's unsettling when someone else's blanket gets tossed because it exposes the idea that nothing is ever certain, that safety is an illusion - that a real life doesn't fit inside the tidy little box we want to keep it in.

Who brings a galvanized metal tub and three bags of ice on a picnic?

It suggests that maybe our time here is not about waiting for the period at the end of the sentence.

Maybe a full life can just be comma, after comma, after comma. 

Lesson.
         After lesson.
                       After lesson.

So long as while we're standing there exposed we are acting with intention, love and grace.  As long as we continue to honor our decisions and stand by our actions.  If we are able to celebrate the uncertainty of a life lived awake it doesn't matter if our picnic blanket gets tossed.

Because we know we will always be right there,

our faces turned toward the sky,

ready to catch everything that matters most to us,

and put it oh so gently back down.

Meg and our girls last summer at the coast.  Tossing blankets just for fun.