A Simple Lesson from a Squirrel...

It's a gloomy, dark, rainy Tuesday today. The rain started hammering my windows at around 2 a.m. and though it's slowed, I don't think it's really stopped. It's currently drizzling, the clouds deep and heavy. It's also much, much warmer than it has been. It's supposed to be over 60 degrees today. It's very springlike. It's a nice lull from the cold freezing temperatures and blanket of snow and ice.

I don't think this means it's spring though. Not yet. The grass has reappeared now the snow has mostly melted and it's still that dull, tired brown of winter. The newness of spring still waiting to reveal itself. There are also still patches of snow that loom in the shade. They're melting and, as they do so, the cold of the snow collides with the warm of the air and a hazy mist hangs between snow and sky. It looks like something from a fantasy novel, as though you'd step into the snow patch and be taken to an alien place, a world that exists seperate from ours.

Don't you wish, somedays, that you could do that? I have, even since I was a child. I read books about made-up-lands that appeared at the tops of trees, lands that existed on the other side of wardrobes, worlds where vampires existed, brutally and romantically. Even as I'm older, I still like to read books that take me away, books like Harry Potter where magic truly exists. I'm old enough to know it's all fiction but young enough that sometimes I wish it wasn't.

I think the days that it's easiest to wish that are the days where we feel like we're stuck in a rut. For me, it's when my job isn't exciting and I feel that a trained monkey could do it. Sometimes it's a day when I have the hope of romance only to have it dashed by the reality of emotional baggage. It's also days when my email account holds rejections from agents when I was so certain that one of them would at least want to see more of what I can do. It's days when I sit down to write and all that flows is a regurgitated version of someone else's work rather than an original, extraordinary idea of my own.

I'm having one of those days today. As I drove in, I got stuck at a stop light and I watched a squirrel smoothly hope from one side of a telephone wire to the other. It wasn't one of those scary electical wires that threaten to fry the squirrel but one of those bundled packages that hang high above, the casing around the bundle providing a safe passage from squirrels. I admired that squirrel. He had a place to get so he hopped along to it. He didn't falter, he didn't slip, he didn't even seem to be looking where he was going. He just knew. He trusted his feet to get him there and they did. He reached his goal with nary a thought.

Somedays, I wish life was that easy. The path that lays before us never seems quite that easy to find. There's too much in the way, whether it's real obstacles or ones that exist in our mind. So we don't hop forward, boldy, as the squirrel did. We stop and try to keep looking down and though we might see the path, our caution makes it slippery and uncertain. For me, the path is always shrouded in self-doubt: "what if I'm not supposed to do this?" "What if I'm not good enough?" "Why do I always get rejected?" "Why can't it be easy?"

The thing is, I don't think it's supposed to be easy. As I've said in this blog before, it feels more worthwhile when it isn't easy. If I do succeed with writing or life, romance or my job, it'll feel like I earned it. The hardest part is keeping my feet on the path that lays before me, even if I can't see it. I have to just trust that it's there and go with my instincts and, one day, like that squirrel, I'll have achieved my goal, even if it's just staying on a path and getting to the other side because that, in itself, is a prize and accomplishment.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy this rainy Tuesday. We're supposed to have thunderstorms tomorrow. If there's one thing I love almost as much as snow, it's a good, powerful Midwestern storm. There's nothing like it. Considering I used to be terrified of storms, the fact that I revel in them nowadays is an accomplishment. And, the ironic thing is, I never had to think about it. I just let it happen.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned there.

Happy Tuesday.