“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
– Albert Einstein
I am amazed this is the last day of January. “Take your time, it won’t be long now till you drag your feet to slow the circles down.” Joni Mitchell sang this about a sixteen year old in a hurry to grow up in her song, Circle Game. I turned sixty this year and the earth is spinning faster than ever before. At this speed, no matter how long I live, there will be stories left unwritten, languages left unspoken, instruments left unplayed, people left unknown, places left unexplored.
So instead of dragging my feet, I’ve decided to lift them up and enjoy the ride. When those circles spin I’ll laugh with glee, I’ll become weightless and free and hold on to nothing. Spinning so fast I’ll get to see the world in a different way, a precious way. The way I used to as child when I spun the globe by my bedside. With awe and wonder. There will be no time for regrets, or complaints, or wishful thinking.
As the changing seasons go by I’ll spin a cocoon of love around me, one that will, over time, transform my old, slow and steady caterpillar ways into the graceful ways of the butterfly, whose mere flap of its wings can cause a hurricane.
