Acceptance is difficult magic

I simply had to stop what I was working on.  I needed to write.  Sometimes it is so obvious that the universe is trying to teach me something.  Teach me something that I desperately need to know or relearn.  The path is built as we walk on it either with our eyes open or closed.  

I accept you, lumbar back of mine.  I thank you for over a half century of support and use.  I know that the recent MRI and P/T visits and pain signals that you are sending me are clear.  A lifetime of sports and accidents and a unique genome has brought us here.  I am still working through the reflected waves of denial and all its flavors.  I think those were tears of joy just now, not sadness.  Acceptance is not giving up, rather, no longer trying to force square pegs into small round holes.

Despite acknowledging for the first time this week the confirmed suspicions of degeneration in those vital five little vertebrae I know that I can still climb and walk and go to concerts and remove and replace doors in our home.  Thank you home by the way for protecting me from the passing shower that came through overnight.  I don’t think I thank you often enough.

I have actually shattered my record this year for both miles hiked and miles of elevation gained.  And I plan on going on two more hikes in the next week if the forecast holds.  Not just hikes but walks in paradise.  The Cascades make me cry.  Walking and even hiking do not aggravate the several interconnected issues in my hips and lower back.  I am so grateful for that.

I went to a concert two nights ago and plan to go to one tonight.  I’ll get to relive my youth singing along to likely every song by Marky Ramone.  It will be reliving, remembering, different of course, but I am so fortunate.  I am not sixteen and this must be okay.  I have no idea how I could have survived life without music.  I am so grateful that I moved to Seattle and started going to lots of shows, I’m sure well over a hundred in just the last ten years.  I’m so grateful to have finally seen Green Day and the Kings of Leon and so many others just this year alone.

And it is not just my lumbar spine teaching me.  Despite building what I thought was a robust portfolio it is actually down slightly today when the market is roaring higher.  I accept this.  I accept that I am not omniscient.  I accept that I am just me.  Some days we are up even more than the market, other days absolutely not.  Of course it is only money after all.

And thank you mystery paint on our house interior trim!  You are teaching me patience and acceptance in case I did not fully get the message from the NYSE or my lumbar spine.  You are not working with me too much as I try to repaint the door trim you sit on top of.  I am not sure if I am learning anything about painting as I work on this project.  I am definitely learning about acceptance.  Really, thank you.  I do not mean that sarcastically.  I would much rather get practice with this lesson with you than with something more existential.

The house is now filled with calm.  My nervous energy seems to be ebbing, the brief shower has passed and the album just concluded on the stereo.  I feel calm and full of gratitude.  I will stop now and patiently await other lessons to come my way, but take your time, I’m in no rush.