25 A wyrd way of life

Slowly, subtly, the changes happen, like the changes in the seasons of the year. I still have no idea why I’m here: but now it doesn’t seem to matter quite so much. I’m still on my own: but that’s how it is, in this moment, at this time, and I find I enjoy it as such. “There’s a whole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza…”

Down by the river, I exchange smiles with a couple walking hand-in-hand down the path, as a cyclist whistles past. Sharing the quiet joys of a bright spring day: a real sense of power, of enjoyment – a very different kind of power, one that exists because it’s shared, one that opens up a new sense of self, a new sense of choice. And although those plastic bags can still be seen entangled in the trees, new leaves have appeared, as if by magic, concealing most of them; and there’s a blanket of springtime flowers on the river-bank, to remind me that nature does heal itself, without needing our active intervention to make it do so. Life is; and for now, right now, that seems to be enough.

Slowly, subtly, changes do happen. Somehow, in some weird way, life does get easier, gentler – yet I’ve done ‘no-thing’ to make it so. Slowly – though never steadily! – I notice that I do get what I need in life. Not necessarily always what I want, of course: yet over time, it becomes as interesting when I don’t get what I want, as when I do.

I still have choices: in fact I sense that what happens to me is far more my choice that it’s ever seemed before. It’s not in my control: but then it never was. But I choose a direction: and something happens. There’s always a choice, there’s always a twist: so each happening is no longer either a success or a failure, but something that tells me more about who I am, more about my choice of who I am – and about my strange yet strengthening connection with the web of wyrd. Weird…

We each choose our own wyrd: and regarding our lives as ‘the way of wyrd’ allows us to be more deeply connected to it, yet paradoxically far less vulnerable to its ebbs and flows. The changes we discover from making that change – working with life’s weirdnesses – are very real: and yet most of them come from ‘no-thing’ more than a change in our point of view. And we discover, too, that as we change, the world changes with us: our own better experience leads to a better world for all. Given the choice – and since we do always have the choice – is that not what we’d prefer to choose?