Happy Birthday to Me

I wake up to the same wind that blows every other day and it caresses my face this morning. I wake up to the same sounds of the universe celebrating her aliveness, the birds still chirp at the same pitch and the same intensity, the trees still in their knowing and understanding of nature as the leaves twitch with the wind feeling alone, separate and able to make it on their own. Nothing has changed this morning but it’s my ear that has changed.

I guess there’s so much more that I can learn from trees, a tree, it is so patient, so still… No matter what you do or say or try, the tree remains firmly rooted to the ground, to the earth that continues to nourish it and it nourishes back.

Its branches, taking life from it and imagining themselves independent of the trunk and then you have the twigs and the leaves that swing with the wind, the leaves that bend with each little flutter.

How significant to humanity the tree is, to me, the tree trunk in this regard symbolises my soul (my somatic self), firm steadfast, tuned into the creator, the branches symbolise my body that imagines its self separate from my soul and the leaves are my emotions, the leaves that flutter with the tiniest change.

The leaves that fall off at season’s end and can be as fleeting as they come, the all self important leaves that die just as quickly as they sprouted and before season end die and allow the branches to give birth to new ones.

How many times have I felt like the new born leaf that my emotions or idea will last forever, how many time have I hurt like a drying leaf as the life is slowly sapped out of me by whatever emotional undertaking I have taken? A million times and yet my soul looks on, my body holds on and the leaves go and come with the seasons.

Sometimes, I have had my branches pruned or bruised, I have had my branches cut off and the hurt has gone beyond the falling of the leaves and I have felt my soul scar! I have had to sometimes cut off or shed my own branches so other types of leaves can begin to grow with the seasons.

My scars from the branch cutting go beyond what the next season can fix, sometimes it takes a lifetime in the tree’s life but I carry those scars with a failing faith and hope.
I have come a long way over the past couple of months, undergone many phoenix processes and still going through some and this morning dawns bright and clear, my birthday, a special day for me albeit an ordinary day for many.

So much has happened, much has changed, I have been loved, I have been put down, I have been betrayed, I have been exalted but I guess all these and more are what life is about whets important is am still here, a bit faithless but here nonetheless.
Sat up yesterday to imagine the day I will leave this world and I realised that its going to be an ordinary day, just like this one, the birds will sing, seeds will germinate and life as we all know it will go on and I question the fate of my existence.
Its been months of my going through so many mini deaths and as I die and live a little, the world goes on, it does not grind to a halt for me, sit by my bedside and say, ‘we shall wait’ and my usefulness or lack of seems insignificant.

High lights of my past year, I have loved, and been loved back, I have felt pain and caused others pain too, I have laughed and cried and made others laugh and cry, all in all an ordinary existence. Have I touched someone’s life? Have I made a difference in someone’s life? I clearly don’t have the answers for that, all I know is that I am still here and the universe rotates as if none of it matters.

I had so many milestones that I set out to achieve at the beginning of the year and am thinking now, they were just that; words that never really materialised into anything more.
I am still flawed, still hurting, still growing but I guess my gratitude is that am still here? Is this it? Must I be grateful that am still here?? What does my being here have to do with anything?
Seeing as the world doesn’t need or require my help. Guess if this day were my last, my gratitude would be for those people who have touched and shared my life, those who at one point genuinely cared for me and learned something from me.

Today, am stepping into faith and learning the hard and easy lessons that are life, I am not significant. I am not special. I am here; to live breathe and laugh until the time comes for Mother Nature to say, step off. It’s time…
Today I choose these lessons from the tree:-
1. That the tree trunk my soul is steadfast and is infinitely connected to the creator
2. That like the branches my body is infinitely connected to the soul
3. That like the leaves my feelings and emotions are as fleeting as the seasons