I spot the typo seven hours too late and cringe.
The misspelled word (I will not confess to what I misspelled…it pains me) grins and waves like a stubborn shrivel of spinach snagged in between my front teeth. That green goblin sneakily carries out mischief to too polite friends and acquaintances at the dinner party, on the date, during the interview, and then like an arrogant villain eager to announce its plots and schemes, announces itself proudly, promptly and very belatedly in the rearview mirror.
That teasing typo is a piece of stuck spinach in a poetic flow about 2018 that I mindfully share to my social media tribe. A lightning bolt of insight illuminates the lessons from the year, and I write in that creative wave to spill out salty and clear heart-truths.
The tongue-wagging, glaring typo torments me because that particular sentence, specifically that word whacked and contorted, did not emerge from the initial, inspired writing. During my glance-over, my editing, I analyze and decide to cram in additional thought that toys with my mind. I feel my insides hiccup a caution – just one fluttery rise of intuitive concern – but I suppress, charge forward to capture the string of a tumbling thought and tie it on to a sentence.
And my ego purrs in the illusion of cleverness quickly popped when I see that glorious mistake staining the original realness of the piece, like red lipstick bleeding through the collar of a white shirt. The purity is in question.
A writing championing trust in instinct, vulnerable authenticity, and a letting go of perfectionism and harshness, too, becomes an internal exercise in living what I preach.
I ignore the subtle and strong sign to surrender and trust what my heart wrote over my mind.
The typo signifies all the past struggles of 2018, of tendencies that I am blatantly aware of and desire to release and rewrite. I make mistakes when I rush, when I react and fail to pause and check in. This year, my current city scheduling hustles and presses one activity, one job on to the next, leaving me emotionally exhausted, physically drained, and clear in my needs to safeguard spaciousness into my daily routine.
And this is all part of the ebb and flow of my learning, and a normal cycling of my energies. I race and pause. I pause and race. And 2018 began with an uncertainty I navigated with intentional pauses, a leaning into and a faithful following of instinct. And then a yes to a string of opportunities colliding into an ongoing, picking-up-the-steam train that I fling myself off of and into the healing stillness emanating from winter woods in Kentucky.
I come home to deeply rest. I come home to practice presence in the pause and to let the answers arise in quiet. I come home to sit beside a twinkle lights christened Christmas tree, and feel soothed by pine, by the darkness of the solstice rippling in gentle waves outside, and pour out all my expectations, all my pressured goings and ways of being, and any staggering responsibilities and heart-held tensions dissipate as I soften and breathe. I restore in the emptiness of simply being.
I sit soulfully content in my own solitude, alone and not lonely with that adorned tree, with the winter earth whispering to sink into peace, rejuvenate in non-doing and reset in the inner flame of knowing.
I adore curling up in the arm chair by the tree, to be present in this body, my body royally claimed, and in a heart liberated from any men, a heart-scape I roam and enjoy in a singleness that celebrates a wholeness. I savor this feeling of being emptied and brimming full of aliveness, stirring excitement to continue to bloom, befriend, begin again in intentions for 2019.
Reverence. Sacred confidence. Spaciousness.
Meditating. Praying. Creative focus.
Surrender. Serenity. Glistening gold and lush pink beauty.
Emptiness. Ease and peace in emptying.
This is a coming home to a true nature of peace, a peace yearning to extend, invigorate, infuse into every piece of this weaving and flowing story of endings and beginnings.
This is a story about turning within, again and again. The external frets about judgments from others, from people who may or may not have noticed the mistake in the writing, fade because it’s more significant in my healing and light-growing to be honest, gentle, mindful and forgiving with my very human self and return any power I give to others back to myself.
I decide. I choose. I decide being over busyness, emptiness over a hustle-and-bustle schedule that exhausts. And I choose to perceive the typo as a teacher.
The typo teaches to take honeyed sweet time when sharing my creative expressions, because my creativity is a heartbeat force worthy of intentionality and being shared with pride and humility. Yes, there will be mistakes, but they can only be learned from when I grant grace and see the mistakes as part of the process and they are separate from the core of me, which mirrors the humming stillness of this winter evening.
Empty and shimmering in presence, in enlivening promise.