Chasing Rabbits

 

 

And so here I was…

I think was Tuesday. I’m sitting at my computer at work and I note the time, it is  exactly 10:21 in the morning and all of a sudden it hits me like a rifle shot.  I begin to question every damn thing I have ever done, or not done in my entire life right there in a span of a minute. I ask myself the age old question: Is this all there is?  I look out the window at the blue sky with cottony puff ball clouds and I yearn to get up and leave and just run. Run past the parking lot and into the field on the other side of the fence, the one with the tall grass where near a stream past the railroad tracks, and run…

To leave and never come back…to sleep under the starts and never ever have another care in the world. I wanted to take all my baggage chuck it out the window and start again and I wanted to turn this damn train around and head for a newer and better destination, one of my choosing not one that fate has chosen for me.

This is when the sudden realization hit me that I was beginning what I think was a mid life crisis.  I noted the time because I knew down deep in my soul that things would never be the same. Pandora’s Box had been opened and all this stuff was rushing out, I could never put this all back nor would I want to.

 

Open the floodgates…

 

 

 

It’s funny…

 

When I think of a mid life crisis I think of a guy in his forties who suddenly goes berserk and thinks he’s “The Wild One”, he dons a leather jacket, buys a motorcycle and prowls for young chicks on beaches and in swanky hotel bars. Of course that is a product of Hollywood and my mid life crisis would be of my making.

 

…plus I AM a young chick...

 

 

A thought crossed my mind;  would I do anything differently if I were 20 yrs younger?  I realized that I probably would do a great many things differently and then I decided that I would carry on like so. Who am I to put a timetable on things?

…and why call it a crisis anyway?

 

How about Opportunity?  Opportunity for growth and change. Opportunity for success and mastery. Opportunity to be master of my own fate. To face my fears and finally be free.

Ever since that day a week ago I have been swimming in enthusiasm. A certain spark has ignited something in me that is akin to magic and I can only be better for it. I am bolder and more outspoken. I am more at ease with myself. I feel stronger and wiser and kinder.

And it was with this mindset…

Hello there!

 

I was watering the flowers and a cute little green grasshopper hopped up out at me, grinned and stayed a spell on the side of the house before disappearing among the tall Black-Eyed Susans and pink and purple Phlox.

I decided to take this as a sign of good things to come and when the tiny brown rabbit approached me in the parking lot at work the next day I really decided to see that as a sign.  For fun I googled the meaning of both animals and what if anything they were trying to tell me.

According to folksy internet lore about spirit animals grasshoppers symbolize taking a leap of faith and funny enough rabbits do too. Both creatures symbolize good luck in doing so. That cute hoppy bunny early that morning that looked at me in trepidation as I snapped it’s pic was trying to tell me that I need to take that leap of faith and that it is in standing still wherein the danger lies.

I mean thinking of this in all whimsicalness and in a bit seriousness too, if the universe or God, or whatever was trying to communicate with me what better messenger? A tiny life out there in the big bad world doing it, living… afraid but alive… making that leap of faith, the very leap I must make.

 

~NLM

 

“You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun–and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that it doesn’t exist–that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists–a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.”
~Paulo Coelho

References and Related articles

Alice in Wonderland: I’m Late & Down the Rabbit Hole

Spirit Animal: Grasshopper

Rabbit Symbolism

 

 

Addendum:  Apparently the above mentioned grasshopper may actually be a Katydid (Thanks Robert) but I was so wrapped up in taking a leap of faith I failed to notice this. I am also choosing to remain in blessed ignorance regarding this one tiny detail because well, why not?  🙂