Spread Your Wings and Swim

Photo credit: @roothub

After the crumbling, came a crescendo. An era of dismantling everything I knew led to dancing my way into a new existence. Each breath was an embrace. Because dare not have I an expectation. Expectations led me to disappoint. So I learned to embrace. 

“I don’t know anything,” my dear friend said to me on the phone one day. This particular friend happens to know a lot. He’s a wise man of the teepee tradition that lives humility to the horizon and back. 

So I’ve found myself somewhere in the midst of ‘humility’ and ‘embrace’. I don’t know anything… except… my knowing. 

My knowing is a matrix of experience. It’s a feeling. A voice. A tempo. An existence. 

One day my knowing told me to say ‘hello’ to a fellow on the beach. So, I did. That ‘hello’ led to an instant anthem (@roothub), which led to a medicinal herb delivery via surfboard to a catamaran in the middle of Hanalei Bay, which led to the beginning of a new era. 

I didn’t know it was going to be a whole new era. Because the winds hadn’t blown in that mental memo yet. 

As an herbalist, I was rooted to the land. Surfing had saved my life during the past year of dramatic, traumatic transformation, but I was still keeping my head above the waves. Little by little, poco e poco, life was pulling me deeper into the knowing of the planet’s humble embrace. 

“Dive. Deeper. Spread your wings and swim,” said the voice. So I did.