The Direction of Intention

I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was textured and difficult. Because our internet connection was spotty – and because our work depends upon a reliable connection – we called our provider to upgrade our service. And, rather than an easy upgrade, we lost our service altogether. And, as I write, almost a full day later, in a world brimming with messages of fast-and-easy, we are still in the internet no-fly zone. After eleven hours, a full five hours on the phone, a trip to the store to get new equipment, ethernet tests on everything but my heart, after a series of pleasant but not-very-helpful service representatives, after the fifteenth (not a joke) suggestion that we “reboot one more time just to see,”we gave up for the night. 

Giving up looked like this: “The problem is on our end,” a pleasant tech offered when there was still light in the sky. “There’s a ticket and our engineers are working on it.” Later, much later, after being passed to two of the engineers-that-were-working-on-it, we heard that they had no idea what the problem was. “We could try to reboot one more time,” he said. “Just to see.”

Kerri looked at me, exhausted, and said, “I can’t do it. Not again.” A battle to be waged another day.

Surrender. I’ve learned this lesson again and again in my life. Sometimes it is best to give over. It is best to stop pushing. Sometimes, there is no solution. Time and a bit of sleep, a new day, will bring another point of view. What was impossible yesterday will resolve today.

In surrender, we sat in the quiet night and talked of our day. The quiet. Nothing dinging or binging or pulling at our attention, nothing notifying us of another message. Nothing trying to keep us hooked for the sake of being hooked. The static was gone. The incessant, “Look at me,” of news apps and Facebook and Instagram and… Life as perpetual “Breaking News.” Within the constant pull, the only thing breaking is our focus. We sat and enjoyed a moment when nothing was breaking.

For a moment during the madness, I looked out the window of my office. The day before yesterday the leaves on our tree were still green. It’s late in the season. Yesterday, in a seeming flash, they were vibrant color. They changed overnight. I was taken, as I always am, by the recognition that the best way to learn color is to go outside, take a walk in nature. See. If there is ever a question about, “Does this color work with that color?” – go outside. Look around. The answer is right there. Crimson and dusty grey. A bit of sage green. Charcoal. Polka dots are not a human invention. The patterns are there, too. Texture. See it.

This morning, while we await the visit from our tech who-will-fix-everything, we’ll go outside. We might play in the leaves. We’ll certainly enjoy the moment without the bings and pings and tech-sounds of made-up-importance. We’ll kneel and coo over the polka dots and salmon pink, the electric yellow and revel in the rare simple moments that a good surrender brings.

[*a hefty thank you to Matt the technician who just spent hours sorting out and fixing what ailed our internet. This post is proof positive that we are, at long last, out of the internet-no-fly zone]

read Kerri’s blogpost about POLKA DOTS

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