when to wonder.

i'm beginning to think, at some point, the thinking stops on its own. after thought after thought, wonder after wonder, everything gets very quiet. very still. almost as if there is literally nothing left to question, because you've already asked it all. the problem is the questions are still unanswered. left hanging. gone into hiding for a bit. at least for the night. waiting for the moment when they can finally be addressed or consciously ignored. but they never, ever disappear.

it rarely helps - the overthinking. in fact, it seems to create a lot of extra worry. but it can't be helped. and while i've tried in the past to "fix" it, there's no getting around it. i am an overthinker, period. maybe it's my instinct, and instead of feeling it in my heart or gut, i think it instead. my instincts as thoughts.

how do you get rid of a question you can't answer right away? in my case, you can't. you just think it to death. how do you let go of a question you're afraid to release? when you choose to let it go - the question you're afraid to ask - more often than not, the answer creeps up on you anyway. somehow. and, at the end of the day, how do you know if you are simply overthinking it (as usual) or if you've stumbled onto something worth thinking over and over?

by what means?

there are some books i enjoy because of the story being told. there are other books, though, that i enjoy not only because of the story, but because of the way the story is written (pat conroy's beach music. loved walked in and belong to me, both by marisa de los santos). the writing moves me. the words move me. and i get caught up in the beautiful how instead of the what. even the wee free men (the first of many books i'm required, yet excited, to read thanks to my children's lit class), a novel by terry pratchett about the adventures of tiny red-headed men and witches, and a novel i'd never expect myself to enjoy, ended up grabbing me from the very beginning because of the author's witty and charming writing. and, once again, i find myself wrapped up in how something has been done instead of what has been done itself.

and it all seems to remind me of one little phrase. it's the thought that counts.

i'm a girl who has her preschoolers decorate cards with simple notes inside them every friday for their parents and caretakers. who believes in and defends intentions. who puts a great deal of thought behind how her words are spoken, written. and who thinks that sometimes, it's not so much about the story itself, and the what we do to fill our days, but how the stories are lived and shared. how our lives are filled.

there's a part in the wee free men when the young girl, tiffany, thinks her grandmother has put a lamb inside an oven to die (stick with me). she screams and cries and doesn't understand why. a little while later, her grandmother opens the oven and reveals the lamb, alive again. once she gets older, though, tiffany finds out that the oven was simply a space for warming the weak, cold and just-born lamb, no magic involved. "that was how it worked. no magic at all. but that time (that first time) it had been magic. and it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done."

at first, tiffany only had the what, instead of the reasoning and the way. and sometimes, that's the magic, the what happened (the story itself). but then, she found the how. and, more often than not, at least to me, it is more the magic when we find the how (the reason and the way) behind it all.

rain to shine.

for years, there was a part of me that believed, in order to move forward, i had to let go of my past. entirely. i couldn't think about it. i couldn't revisit it. i couldn't reminisce over pictures that celebrated it. and i couldn't let the old me define the person i was moving toward, growing into. i prided myself on progressing away from the years i had yet to put behind me and building an altogether different kind of life. one day, though, i realized it all went hand in hand. that past life was not a life in and of itself. it was a part of me and my life. just one part. one significant part that connected to the next. that lead me to my better, best days. and so, the remembering was no longer a step back or a set back. it was simply, and solely, a look back. a look back on the days and choices that lead me.. here. a place where i can think about, revisit and reminisce over the past, letting the old me stick around as a reminder of how far i've come and how far i'm capable of going. rain or shine? rain to shine.

but i don't mind the dark, discovering the day.

what's being done... a little sharing from the book...

I find a kind of comfort in nighttime falling rain; in the drops dancing madly against a receiving window pane; in the way it descends relentlessly at times and ever-so-gently at others. I like it best, though, when the rain cascades torrentially from afternoon into evening and from evening into the darkest of midnights, with no attention to the drowning world and collecting puddles. It just falls and pours and masks all that breathes beneath it. And just when you think it’s gone for good, the rain comes in again and takes hold.

Sleep comes easier below a roof being sprinkled with rain. A constant, yet ever-changing, rhythm that lulls and cradles, setting the tone for the night of sleep ahead. A quiet, effortless sleep, uninterrupted and settling, that takes places only underneath a rainfall. So much so that you long for that nocturnal downpour time after time again, because within it and the shadows it creates against your bedroom wall, there and always you find your deepest, darkest sleep.

There’s a certain, recognizable silence within the deafening tumbling down of rain. Thoughts and the innermost contemplations take second place to it almost involuntarily. As drowned out as the newly-soaked ground now. It’s something else to listen to, rather than the noise inside that otherwise takes over. That is, if you listen intently enough. It all goes hand in hand - the silence, the easy sleeping. One only exists with the other, and both only exist when it rains. And perhaps that’s where that kind of nighttime falling rain comfort comes from - the stillness inside the storm.