Reflection

There has been very little time recently for any kind of reflection, any kind of standing or staring at all. Life has been unfeasibly busy, but the job that has been making so has been given its marching orders (well, as soon as I find another one, that is). I decided this last year, but then failed to see it through so have had to decide it all over again, teaching is no longer for me.

Now I need to guts to decide what else to do, that will meet my current and future needs.

I did have a moment though, and the photo above is one I took that day. I looked after my friends' two kids for three days. On the third day, I was joined by their godparents so could relax a bit on the childcare front. We went to Sheffield Park and I had a moment of peace where I could reflect, could stand and stare, could stop thinking and just be, surrounded by beautiful colours.

I need moments like this.

I am also using my counselling to reflect on where I am going in my life. No answers yet! I have such a long way to go. I am reminded of this poem by Robert Frost:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

 

"I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were rooms yet to enter or books written in a foreign language. Don't dig for answers that can't be given you yet: you live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer."

~Rainer Maria Rilke

I need quotes like this, too.