nature's zodiac

Once I got lost coming back home from Montreal. I pulled over to ask a couple of road workers if they knew the way back to Vermont. They looked at each other and began speaking French. I was about to try asking again in my best attempt at French when the man turned back around with a great big smile. “Go up zee ramp and take a left and then close your eyes, you will be back in Vermont”.

I have often thought about this, “close your eyes” remark this joyous man made. Mostly because it filled me with such relief. I went from being stressed, alone and disoriented to relieved, supported,  reoriented and also entertained (his words made me laugh). 

I think the French kind of have this way about them. They can ‘close their eyes’ and enjoy a longer lunch. They seem often able to slip into a waltz-like state, in conversation, in walking down the road, in fixing a road! I think it is for this reason that I have always been drawn to this culture. They seem to know how to submit to their own stride. In ‘closing their eyes’ and letting their inner command of cool take charge, they avoid falling into the all-too-American trap of neurosis. 

I often catch myself in a state of mind that is worried, and I can’t place what the worry is about. I wonder how my physiology is attempting to regulate this ‘mess on aisle four’ that I am creating for no reason. All it would take is something funny to happen in front of me and laughter would pump fresh air into my system, relieving it immensely from its former state, just like my feeling on the side of that Montreal highway. 

It could also take merely an instant of awareness that nothing is indeed presently wrong. A simple ‘tout va bien’ reminder would suffice and reroute the course of billions of neuronal cells. 

As the saying goes, trust is a two way street. If we can learn to trust a larger force at work within us, a guiding force that is always busy, just often unlistened to, then we can certainly let go of much of the inner chatter that stresses our body for no reason. Likewise, if the inner guide can begin to trust in our competence as rational thinkers and good navigators, might it, out of respect, send up surges of new energy?

It might!

Maybe we all have a kind of a psychic trust fund that builds on the very principle of mutual trust between ourselves and our larger, guiding natures.

Goethe wrote, “just trust yourself and you will know how to live.”

Close your eyes. 

Tout va bien.