In The Mist....

If you look really closely you might just see a mountain behind the fog, clouds and light mist that was falling when this picture was taken today. It is a really big mountain, and there are lots of other pictures throughout my blog to prove it really exists somewhere in the mist. But this photo gave me pause because it made me think how would one really know that a big old mountain was really there if you can’t see it? Kind of like that old adage: Does a bear…?? Well, you know the rest.

It also made me realize that this photo captures just about what I’ve been feeling as of late. In so many aspects of my life actually. Like I have this big majestic mountain hiding within me waiting to proudly stand tall and face the world, but it keeps getting hidden by storm clouds or fog or a horribly gray day. This happens so much that there are days that I begin to doubt the mountain’s existence at all.

Today on NPR I heard about a disease called Cotard’s syndrome. It’s where someone believes they are dead. It was actually pretty fascinating, but also complicated and sad. Oddly I had slight feelings of this immediately following my car accident–sort of this loss of touch of reality, a suspended animation so to speak. I wasn’t quite sure I had made it out alive and my brain had been so rattled that my memory loss only added to my sense of confusion.

So I mention this with regards to my current feelings of being ‘in the mist’. There’s this sense of detachment of what I would like my reality to be and what it actually ends up being. I know that the mountain is clearly there: I see it vividly in all it’s splendor. But somehow, that seems to be locked in my mind’s eye and not what presents in the real world. And this can become very frustrating.

As an example, for so long I pictured my life in a loving relationship. And for many years I pursued this, almost doggedly at times. And yet, it has not come to fruition. That ‘outcrop’ on the mountain ledge that seemed quite attainable to reach became more and more like a steep wintry pass during a hike to attain the summit of Mount Everest. It too, finally has faded behind the clouds and I can no longer navigate my way around those pathways any longer.

And my career joy has alluded me also. Once such a satisfying thing, now it slides in and out of caves and crooks in the mountain’s rocks. Some days it’s a bright and shining love and others I long to be done with it all. But the nature of the world today traps us all in the stations we are in, whether it be home or job, so we must deal the best we can. Even though I know the true sense of what I can be is deep within me…the true, strong joy is there waiting to burst forth. Instead, I take solace in the fact that I have a job at all and plunder on.

I’m not really sure why it’s my karma to have this huge sense that there’s this big, huge ‘thing’ just under the surface–hiding behind the mist waiting…waiting for what I don’t know? The right time? Money? Fate? Serendipity? Action? Some days I see it all so clearly but I can’t seem to make it happen. I guess maybe I am just like that mountain. It sits there and the world happens to it: the rain, the snow, the sun, the humans climbing it, the animals making homes, erosion. Maybe I just have to BE the mountain and my day will come, the mists will part and all will become clear and I will see my way through to my destiny.

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