Finding an Even Keel

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly regaining my equilibrium after an exciting and busy Christmas.  Now, it’s time to get back to normal, whatever that means.  Perhaps normal refers to living our usual patterns that provide us the comfort of familiarity.  That is a good thing. However, we can get too comfortable find ourselves living on automatic pilot.  Doing new things breaks us out of the pattern and the excitement gives us fresh eyes to see things in new ways.  But too much change and we find ourselves unsettled, rushing from one activity to another, and getting worn out.  For me, a happy life is a balance between the familiar and the new.  These first weeks in January, we returned to our pattern of going to the gym three times a week.  It is good to get back to the bicycles, the weight machines and yoga.  I also find I am having lunch with friends, enjoying reconnecting.  The Book Club met.  On these rainy winter days, the Botanical Garden is especially quiet.  I haven’t spent much time there.  Each plant has adjusted to the colder temperatures, the short days and the rain.  The deciduous trees have lost all their leaves while the magnolia buds are swelling, getting ready to burst forth in blossom in a few weeks.  Each plant is resting and preparing for spring in it’s own way.

Bob and I are preparing this week to go on a ten day birding trip to Oaxaca, Mexico each of us in our own way.  Bob said we are like the Ant and the Grasshopper in an Aesop fable.  I am concerned with having the right clothes for different weather extremes.  I prepare way ahead of time: my trip clothes have been laid out for more than a week.  Bob is concerned with having the right lenses for his camera and has gone on several bird photographing sessions in the last week.  We were going to practice our birding skills but it has rained nearly every day since the first of the year, so we haven’t.  I look forward to warm weather, the experiencing the gentle ambiance of Mexican culture,  the rich natural environments and seeing new birds.  Bob is looking forward to having a relaxing time with everything taken care of for us, concentrating of the scenery and photographing the birds, and the Mexican culture and the food.  Together we will experience all this each of us in our own way.   It is good to get out of our routines and do something new and exciting.