Lethargy Follows
August 25, 2023
Beautiful souls! As is typical of life, it has been busy, and while I would love to use this as an excuse for my folly of not writing, I cannot. Writing is a challenging passion because it necessitates feeling, and not fleeing. Close spellings, but very different. Writing is a confronting task, when done well and with heart, for it is of the heart to write well. Dilettantes will not find gold, I am learning.
Here is a piece I wrote this morning about lethargy:
Lethargy follows.
Blessings dear lender of an ear, here I shall tell a tale so clear, of a man who walked and waited and was, not only a man but a friend of love. Hell or high water descend on our land, we shall front our fear and stand. All life is waiting for the wicked to wilt, and I am a lad who has only a hilt. My sword has gone missing in the land of my youth, and I longed to go find it, and so I looked inside my soul soup. From the minute I allowed my longing to drift, my soul was inspired and came alive with a rift. From tween nights of love and days of naught, appeared a bird and a feeling of rising above. I laughed and flew myself from the ground, leaking serene into the following hounds. Here, I arrive at the moral of tales, lethargy follows, yet the flight shall prevail, for all lessons of love and learning intact, are the leaders of lilting songs and facts: Here, alive and arise, for the flight is flowing, and lethargy can only but follow.
The tale told, here are the simple words:
All of us deal with feeling lethargy in our lives; that stagnating resistance to getting up and after, to dealing with the dreariness and the doldrums… and yet, here is the lesson I’m learning, lethargy only exists if it catches us. If we allow ourselves to flow and move freely without holding ourselves back from our callings, then lethargy will always exist only behind us, not in us or with us. As we learn to let go of our anchors, lethargy lingers with them. On the other hand, when we allow ourselves to be held back or down, then lethargy seeps into our bones, and flowing out of it becomes even harder. It’s simple physics: an object in motion stays in motion, and an object at rest is quite difficult to move. Stay moving, but always know that moving slow is a beautiful option, for that allows us to keep our sanity and rest without burning out.
All lessons I’m learning as I light them with words, imperfect self, learning lessons.
Life is mystical, but it’s also practical. As I grow up into an “adult,” I learn the value of practicality. Part of what’s practical is to provide for myself the time and space to lean into my loves and to let go of my shoulds. One such choice is to read more and watch less. Some of the brilliant books I’ve been reading lately, and which I would recommend to anyone for whom this blog resonates, are:
Grit by Angela Duckworth;
Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson; and
Show Your Work by Austin Cleon.
Each one exposes us to our paths to play with life by putting in maximal effort in authentic and resilient ways.
With all my love!
Faolan
PS. If you enjoy reading my writing, I’d love to hear from you! You’re always welcome to leave a comment :)