How to Pay Attention This Week

Listening to what we are drawn towards to guide us deeper into ourselves

I am sure you are noticing a theme this month in this series. We are focusing less on nature and more on ourselves. After all, this is the month of tending to ourselves, and how can we do that if we do not learn to listen and pay attention to ourselves in the first place?

We are deep in the cold and winter here in northern Michigan. The late warmth from fall and early winter feels tucked away, at least for now, and the cold is rushing in all around us. It requires demands and observations about life. We find ourselves home more now with the waves of lake effect snow coming in bands and the driving being far slower. We only go to town for what we must and then tuck away back home. We spend our days cooking, writing, creating, pulling out a puzzle to keep us busy after a warm dinner, moving outdoors as much as we can, and sinking into the depths of these really good weeks of winter. These days are vital for us and nature in the north, too. Yes, even the bitter cold is good-natured. The ice that forms over the lake will kill invasive plants when it stays long enough, the ticks will be fewer, and the trees and plants that need the cold will be able to thrive longer in our shifting climate.

Everything except the tracks from the deer, mice, coyotes, and rabbits speak of the quiet of nature all around us. The roses aren’t prepping to bloom, the daffodils await their time in spring, and the trees are lying beneath the frost line, reserving themselves in their roots. The pines are heavy with snow now, and the paths home fill quickly when a band of snow comes in. It’s a time of introspection and quiet in nature, so it is in us too.

That said, when winter settles in, and the cold is really cold, we begin to feel an ache. Not like a sore muscle or joint sort of ache, but instead, a deep and soulful desire that persists in ourselves not physically but emotionally or spiritually. In winter, those feelings can linger in the shadows at night or enter our dreams while we sleep. They can feel exciting, haunting, joyful, or sad, but nonetheless, they exist. Every one of us has them or many of them.

In the depths of winter, it feels the perfect time to give them space to dance in our minds. We can let them play like the snow that flies in the brisk cold air. We must give our aches space to play —- they can teach us about what we desire most in life. Sometimes, they are practical, and sometimes, they don’t align with our current life. All of which are worthy of laying on the table of our minds and understanding. Something that can be sort of hard to meander through in the height of the abundance of summer and vibrancy of nature, but much easier when we find ourselves quietly tucked in early in the evening and with a hushed landscape around us.

For me, I have many aches right now I am noticing. Some revolve around my children. I see them growing so quickly. I ache to hold them right now at these ages. Though they are still confined to life with their ages, I feel I want to preserve the past, too.I feel this pull to make books of each year of life. It’s something I always tell myself I want to do. I want to have them sit with the kids and remember the beauty of the times of them growing up and to remind me I lived those memories so fully because I really did. It isn’t an ache to return as much as an ache to hold something that feels so precious.

There are other aches as well. Aches to simplify and be still more often. To find myself less social. To find myself tending to the life I have. Then there are the aches, which are the ones I keep to myself. They aren’t for the world, and those are okay to have, too. We all have them. But all of these are worth hearing. They are worth feeling, and I find they usually surface in the stillness. When I lie next to my daughter as she falls asleep, I watch the stars or clouds pass from her window while rubbing her back. They usually come out in my writing on the pages I don’t share with the world. They also come as I glide on my skis alone and feel the snow rush over them like today. The ache to feel something in a new way or to hold something or let something go. The ache to return to what was or to choose a new path. Somehow, they come right as that perfect turn comes over the fresh snow. I think it is the crisp air and the white land around me. Everything is ready for me to paint a new image on. I do not know but I do know this is what winter asks us to hear and embrace with an open heart each night as we fall asleep with the cold air outside and us tucked warm under the heavy blankets.

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