Dear transition,
Sometimes I don’t understand you. Actually, mostly I don’t.
Are you a feeling/emotion?
If so, perhaps you are one of those all consuming emotions/feelings. Like, how we say we’re “in transition,” as if we were “in a city” or “in an ocean.” But we don’t say that we’re in joy, or in anger, or in contentment or in hate. Perhaps these are feelings we can’t be fully in… But in transition is something we can be.
And we can be in pain. And we can be in love… I want to be in transition the same way I’m in pain and in love. To feel everything. The nights and the mornings. The dragons and the damsels. The demons and the doves. I want to be emptied by the lows so I can be filled by the highs. I want to touch the very bottom so I can feel the mountains I’ve climbed during the moments at the top.
But how do we know, dear transition, where you will take us? Or if we’re the one leading, or simply following? Should we look ahead, in the future. Or behind, into our past. Or within… A boy who lost his mom said that his favorite star is Tau Ceti, because it’s only 12 light years away, which means that if there is life inside Tau Ceti’s solar system, it is just now looking at light (and life) that happened 12 years ago in our own solar system. 3 years before his mom died.
Somehow, when we are looking at the stars, we are looking at both what’s behind us, and what’s ahead of us. And also, what’s above us. But more literally, what is all around us, for the stars are everywhere.
Dear transition, perhaps you might be like the stars, inviting us to look at the light from the past which is just now reaching us. Which we are just now able to understand. While encouraging us to keep looking forward, and up. And to learn to live within.
Dear transition, shine like the north star. Guide us through the chains we find ourselves in, guide us through the crop fields and eventually through the wildernesses and on towards freedom. Guide us from the south to the north, from the bottom towards the top. Guide us like my Grandma Ollie’s spirituals. Guide us like light from the past, leading us into the future. Guide us like you are in us, and like we are in you.
b
