I rise this morning wondering what will happen with my day. I was going to be in a canoe today with a new friend I feel I’ve known over a lifetime, but the weather is shaky and she is recovering from a nasty bout of covid. I’m still tired from the canoe trip, too. Not fully unpacked physically or mentally.

This weekend we stayed out at Ghost Lake. Each day we threw sticks for Athena in the icy water and she retrieved them, over and over.

Last night we viewed some of the videos we’d taken during our summer canoeing excursions. Day three in Quetico (August 3), I talked about what I was afraid of (big wind/waves) and all the things I love: mushrooms, trees, water, wind, waves.

Last night I fell asleep to recorded forest sounds playing through my phone. I dreamed of standing on a shore, looking out over an expanse of water. No longer afraid. Now, waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for…

Why do I canoe?

I ask myself this question often. Over and over I choose canoeing. Why?

I love canoeing so much, I want to “sell it” to everyone else. Why?

Here are some answers:

Level 1: Canoeing is adventure, healthy adventure. #72hoursinnature #significantlyreducesstressmarkers

Level 2: Communication required. Trust. Confronting fear. #healthyrelationships #facingfear #lifegoals

Level 3: Relationships with every thing is possible. #weareallconnected

Level 4: Today’s response: I canoe to make space in my existence for something else. Out of the routine of most of my days, I am in flow with the water, the wind, the land and the sun. In these moments, something else arises. The something else is a deepening relationship with the world. Each of my senses is tuned to capture more broadly, more deeply, the essence of what is. #whatishappeningtome #mindblowing

My context: I’ve spent many years attempting to fix what was wrong: with myself, with others. Self improvement seemed like the educated, eventually happy, woman’s path. Her hero’s journey was improving herself– everyone knew she was a hero just by looking at her: the clean house, glowing skin, fit body, successful children, gorgeous garden. Much of my life has been dedicated to shaping a version of myself others would love, respect, honour. Decades and decades of living, I felt I was being observed and each of my actions evaluated as good or bad. I frequently repeated as an antidote to the frenzied circling in my brain of all-the-ways-I-am-not-enough, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” I learned this from Oprah. An act of defiance against the observer.

Even though I thought saying I love you affirmations were likely bullshit, I didn’t have many other options.

Back then, I fell into bed at night, exhausted from the self-improvement practices, grateful for sleep to take over my mind and find some freedom from the watcher.

In taking care of others, I found an expression of self with the least amount of tension. My self fell away during the times I was needed- cleaning up children’s vomit, listening to a friend’s catastrophic life chapter, pursuing my employer’s objectives to change the world without realizing the falseness of their promise.

During these acts of giving my attention to others, I didn’t think about my stringy hair, my too-thin lips, the changing shape of my body. I didn’t worry about washing the floor each day, eating low fat food, worrying about money. When I was taking care of others, I didn’t exist.

I thought my care of others would lead to freedom.

I feel ashamed to say the truth: I hoped others would proclaim their love and devotion to me, so loudly and so clearly and so unconditionally, I would be able to relax into their love and not have to improve anything. I could simply be.

I canoe because it is a world where I can be without the noise of self-improvement, where the calling to help others quiets. It’s a world where my attention is tuned to the connection between the small me and greater possibilities of existence. Beyond self-improvement lies freedom. I find it in a canoe.

I read the poem Clearing by Martha Postlewaite this morning. I remembered how my need for self-improvement faded away the more time I spent in quiet with myself. I wonder if stillness is a kind of clearing in a forest?

Still in progress, I offer ideas for the reader’s consideration. I don’t know why. I am on the shore, perhaps, or in the forest clearing. This is my song this morning. I don’t need to improve it. Just notice, observe, and move from experience to experience.

Clearing

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life

and wait there patiently,

until the song that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue.

~ Martha Postlewaite