Komorebi

Either I’m becoming less mentally and emotionally nimble or the pace and furor of the world around me is increasing. Maybe it’s both.

Every morning, I awaken and sip hot coffee while I check email—it’s usually full of reminders of things I have to do and depressing newsletters about political turmoil. I’ve cut the number of newsletter subscriptions in half. That’s likely not enough, but I don’t want to get blindsided by the latest atrocity.

I shake my head, don my sturdy shoes, and head out on my morning constitutional. That should be both relaxing and invigorating, but more often than not I spend the time lost in worry about things over which I have no control, and stewing about looming “to-do” list items.

Upon my return, I hit that “to-do” list but fail to experience much of a sense of accomplishment, even when I check off multiple items. I thought retirement was supposed to be fun.

I’ve limited my media news intake to the PBS Newshour, but sometimes even that feels like too much.

Will this madness ever end? I’m exhausted. And I’m not making much progress on the book I’ve been trying to write.

So, I’m experimenting with something new. I sat in on a Zoom “writing cave” – a gathering of authors who write together in silence for an hour. The leader provides a prompt, but participants have the option to use the time to focus on something they already have in progress. Togetherness while writing separately is a unique experience for me, and I think I like it.

I intended to utilize the hour to edit a chapter I drafted last week. However, I couldn’t resist today’s prompt: “Despite the English language having hundreds of thousands of words, sometimes another language has a word that captures an emotion, object, or situation more precisely than we can in a single English word.” Of five example words, I chose Komorebi, the Japanese term for sunlight filtering through leaves onto the ground.

A picture sprang into my mind of a scene that I ignored this morning during my stroll in the woods. Deep green leaves, heavy with dew, glistened gently as the first rays of sunshine touched a tulip poplar. Faint shadows moved slightly on the ground below. Refracted sunlight appeared as bright dots on the grass beneath the tree. One leaf lay glittering in a patch of sun. I could feel myself relax.

Who knew? I enjoyed my morning walk more this afternoon than I did at sunrise.

Komorebi.

#komorebi #morningvibes #dewdrops
Photo by Sebastian Schuster on Unsplash