I am living the dream. My dream anyway. Home is a cabin in the woods away from the busy doing of city life. No more diesel buses rumbling or drunken packs of howling young men stumbling in checkered shirts and fleeces outside my window. Yet it is not like I imagined it would be.
I did not rise early this morning to sip hot water with lemon, there was no bowing to my meditation cushion (there is no meditation cushion), my dog is not curled up by the roaring fire and I am not sitting with a contented, all knowing smile feeling connected to all that is (insert requisite eye roll here).
Instead I can be found wearing a hat and gloves inside because my cabin is cold, like olive oil is a solid in the cupboard cold, twitching because ticks and Googling symptoms of Lyme disease because I pull 100's off Leo whose happiness is dependent on tearing through the woods like a crazed wildebeest on his twice sometimes thrice daily walks. My fireplace is basically decorative even though I fill it with logs and poke at it every 15 min. My DVD fire implied as much heat and needed less tending. My books remain in stacks unread and as I said nothing is as I imagined it would be.
So what is the lesson in this? Be careful what you wish for? Wherever you go, there you are? (Why do these all end in prepositions? Googled and discovered this is no longer a thing).
While my realized dream may not look like I imagined, truth be told if it had I'd surely be bored out of my decorative gourd. Instead I've learned quite a bit about myself in this A-frame house atop a mountain. Have learned to listen. Learning my body's wisdom is as valuable if not more than my mind's. That the beauty of this adulting human thing is that we all have choices available and can choose again and differently. That as the brilliant Joseph Campbell said, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.” That we can learn as much if not more from what doesn't work for us as what does. That there is beauty in the breakdown. That when you "arrive" then that part of the journey is over.
So as I huddle in front of my faux-ish fire and contemplate my word, my rudder, for 2016 I will also think of and thank all that has shown up in 2015 – the love and lessons and then I will let go. I will smile a contented smile and go back to stroking the pages of my Kinfolk Home (read: House Porn) dreaming of warm mountain homes with sweet dogs curled up by a roaring fire.
What will you invite in for 2016?