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Sometimes We Need to Lighten Up
and listen
Hello friends,
My latest essay is all about lightening up.
It’s about listening to bees (and wasps, because that’s how I roll). It starts with me pulling the Ansuz rune, and then continues with me watering the garden. And then things get interesting…
I paused to watch the bees pollinating the false pennyroyal, a low, spreading bush with small green leaves and little purple flowers. The bees love it.
They buzzed around me, happily at work, as I squatted near the bush, and snapped a photo.
Around ten minutes later, I was folding laundry while on a phone call with a friend. I felt something on my neck, and brushed my hand across it. I figured it was just my necklace, but it being spider season, you never know.
A bee dropped onto my bedspread. “Sorry, I need to call you back, there’s a bee on my bed.”
So, a bee hid out in my T-shirt and took a ten minute ride before deciding to crawl out from its safe home. But later? A wasp flew into my hair. And later still? Another bee flew right at me.
Finally, I realized I needed to listen to the message they were sending. Now, I don’t think these insect were trying to send me anything. They were just going about their business, and I got in the way. But I needed to listen nonetheless.
And the message was:
To lighten up.
Specifically, to work and move and live with lightness. A lighter heart. A lighter touch. A lighter mind.
In a world filled with stress and strife? How can we learn to move with greater lightness? How can we learn to encounter the world with that same lightness? Can we give ourselves and each other that same grace?
This is a lesson I’m returning to now, and one I’ll gladly try to take in for a long time.
How about you?
best wishes - Thorn
Please head over to my blog and read the rest of the essay! I’d love to read your comments on the topic, either there or on Substack. Also, I was on a very fun podcast recently. We talked about books, and my strange professions, and all sorts of things. You can listen at Page Chewing.
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