Horizontal

It’s hard to be upwardly mobile when you’re horizontal in the sun.

Right now I’m horizontal, lying in the sand, listening to the surf, feeling my growing hair blow in the breeze.

The only regularly scheduled thing on my calendar is the daily Bored meeting and that after morning prayers at the Breakfast Club. Other than that its salt air and sea spray and beach music.

I’ve had way too much vertical in my life. Always shooting upward or doing my best to propel others to do so. I’ve danced with all of the stars of politics, business and celebrity and am glad to be away from all of that …ego. I’m doing my best to drown mine in the ocean. It has served me well I suppose but I don’t want to be over reliant on it again.

My geography is small and the people that I talk with is very tight these days. No longer being there for everybody all of the time. Just some.

One wrote me over the weekend. “We’re just waiting to see when you’ll heal and get off that damn roller coaster. It kind of seems that you’re all over the place right now (as it should be) …Wow! When Stellar gets his grove back and gets back to a giving place in his heart … sure would be cool to be on that radar.”

The words made me stop and ponder them for a long time.

I thought that I was healing. I believe that my heart is still capable of giving. My groove’s gone? I thought with this small geography and tight circle of friends that I wasn’t all over the place.

But her words proved me wrong. And her right.

My friend Kim Hinely likes something called “Depression is not a sign of weakness it is just a sign that we’ve been too strong for too long.”

I was checking the status of my friends on Face Book when I saw that she had liked this link.

These words also gave me pause and I pondered them. What is the aftermath of being so strong for so long for others who didn’t have it in them to be strong for themelves?

Everything has a cost and all of my success, vertical achievements and upward mobility has left me here sitting in the wind on my beloved back deck, alone for the first time in my life, wondering exactly what it is that I want to do next.

This morning I the Breakfast Club I was sitting with Helen, Jodee’s mother, and the woman who actually started the place. She was asking me what I’m going to do next so I was throwing out what my options are. Helen was excited about each one and it is hard not to love someone who conveys excitement over you. It made me excited about my possibilities.

Then we talked about being alone. She likes her space and routine.

“Home is wherever you happen to be,” a homeless friend of mine told me, and what I have come to think that he meant by this is that we are ultimately home to ourselves. It’s just us. If we’re fortunate we don’t have to do it alone.

My horizontal time will soon be over. I’m finally on the Sabbatical that I wanted three years ago that likely would have changed a lot of things. That’s the thing about gifts right? You never know when they’re going to arrive. Not necessarily when you ask for them but always later. And gifts have cost associated with them too.

So for now I’m going to stay horizontal, laying my head back down in the sand. Not an ostrich but to enjoy the feeling of warm sand on my face.