Meditation on a view

The yellow chairs had captured her imagination, but it was the bridge across the little meadow that caught her heart. That bridge lead over and away into the horizon that the view promised. On a sunny day, that view stretched out into endless possibilities. Possibilities of doing and seeing and being in ways that had long since escaped her reach.

The journey that brought her to the bridge over the meadow and to those yellow chairs, set so appealingly as if for a conversation among friends over tea, had been unplanned and, in so being, its impact entirely unexpected. When asked if she wanted to pack a bag and come along for a trip into the country, she had, without much thought, said yes. Why not? Nothing much to keep her here, in the hot city, at the height of summer.

The turn down the driveway showed the reason for making the effort of the trip — that view, the bridge, those chairs. Together, they represented everything the friends in the vehicle had left behind or, rather, had traveled for, precisely because none of them had anything there like what was here: Openness. Vastness. Space. Space that lowered the shoulders, expanded the lungs, and slowed the heart rate.

Life is fraught with needs and obligations, with shoulds and musts, but, here, with that view into further than tomorrow — here, life became a gentle rhythm of the possible, of desires hitherto unfelt, of dreams never before remembered. Such is the power of place. To find oneself in the exact right spot for the moment in which one’s imagination takes shape and roots itself in one’s mind — that moment of wonder and transformation is where she discovered herself to be on that bridge over the meadow.

The days passed and, one morning, she realized that she was no longer her old self of worries and deadlines and work, but was a new self of ease and time and gain. Immeasurable gain, for she knew that leaving the meadow and its bridge and no longer seeing the view into beyond tomorrow would not mean no longer having any of it. This new self of hers acknowledged all those things, and she carried their promise with her — back into the city, where nothing was there as it was here. But she was there and, now, newly formed and newly rooted, her self would be enough. And, tomorrow, she would paint her kitchen chair yellow.

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Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash