Tuesday - Sadness

Today I start work at 11.30am. It's raining so I can't go out climbing the foothills which is what I'd normally do on my morning off.

I drink coffee and look at my 'to do' list - this is the wish list that never gets done…buy new hiking boots, sewing repairs to dresses and friends' jeans, type up camping equipment lists, restring guitar, sort out a year of receipts into some kind of order etc.
I decide to do the sewing.
I listen to Joanna Newsom.
And I cry.
The eye of the sewing needle disappears into a blur.

Joanna Newsom's music echoes the music I listened to as a lonely, misunderstood teenager. I am transported back in time and in body, feeling the feelings of that fragile young girl who thought no-one understood her, who spent days, weeks, months alone in her room, listening to Leonard Cohen, Jackson Browne and Kate Bush, reading poetry and philosophy, wondering why the outside world was so cruel, desperately wanting to love and be loved, to be protected from it all.

35 years on, I have developed inner security and inner love.
I now know that the outside world is only a reflection of the inner world.

But occasionally sadness seeps up from the underground well of my past, it's a sadness that emerges from my accumulated losses and unfulfilled desires; this sadness seeps up, spreads out and expands to encompass the losses and suffering of all human beings, our yearnings for elevation, for love, for freedom, for living out the fullness of our potential…it is the sadness of falling short of what we know is possible.
This sadness for our tender existence overwhelms me at times.

Keeping busy with work and activities masks my deeper wounds and prevents me from really feeling and understanding the sweet, soft sadness of the soul.