Find Your Inner Cork
This weekend is a surreal dichotomy. Here in Upstate New York it was glorious early spring weather yesterday, and the windows were open and the birds were singing their “hey, you wanna build a nest” songs — while in Texas there was the gut-wrenching fear that everything you owned (or perhaps even you and your loved ones) could be burned out in minutes by the wildfire ripping through so much of the state.
That seems to be the world these days. If we are having a calm day, there is no telling what is going on in Kyiv…or Moscow… or Beijing… or Washington… or any of the other world hotspots for intrigue, grief and danger.
While our lives may feel safe, another’s may feel a razor’s edge away from disaster.
There is so much in the world that is crying out for redress, so much rage and hate screaming at us from news and world communication and mass media, that we feel like we’re going down for the third time.
It is hard to have hope right now. It’s as simple as that.
But that’s why I keep a cork in my office.
Cork is not magic. This one, in its earlier days, stoppered a bottle of very good wine. But now it sits on my desk (when Prawn isn’t batting it around the living room) to remind me that cork…floats.
Think about it: so many things in flood waters sink. Everything from tree branches to road signs to cars can get upended, torn up or submerged. But cork? That little sucker will bob to the top no matter what. It doesn’t absorb the water for a long, long time. It dances along the time of the waves, the waters, the floods.
We need to be made of cork. Or at the very least, find our Inner Cork.
The negatives, the fears of the world are like so much flood water. And these days, even those of us who are usually very good swimmers, are fighting the riptides and the undertows.
But we have it within us to be corks. We do not have to absorb all the horrors and make them our own.
It doesn’t mean we deny their existence; we can’t. But it does mean we can hold our head above the water — to observe where we are, where we might go, and how we might bring others with us.
No, life isn’t all like that wonderful bottle of Shiraz my cork came out of. But it isn’t all floodwaters, either, no matter what today might feel like.
How do you float? Never forget to find the things that ARE working in your life. Hold on to good memories, to remembered successes, to times when you felt 100% connected with who you are and what you’re meant to do Here. If you were There once, you can be There again — even if “There” has a different set of circumstances.
Sometimes the simplicity of a cup of coffee, or clean clothes in a drawer, or fifteen minutes when we have no demands on us, can help us to refocus, recharge, and shake ourselves out of any pity party we find ourselves in.
It doesn’t matter what it takes. Find that Inner Cork, and bob to the surface of Life.
Because when you do, it means you have the resilience to reach out to others who are going down for the third time, in order to help as you can, without drowning with them.
The world is a horror show right now. Yes. I know. And I am not getting all “lovenlight” and “glurpy purple with angels” on you, I promise.
But this I do know, for certain: if we are going to get to the other side of the Dark, we have to hold onto the memories of what the Light can be when it floods our lives. Or else what are we fighting for?
