The winter mind.

It seems my mind is both full and empty.

I think about a time when my neck doesn’t hurt, and the tendons don’t grind – these days are both past and future.

I think about Big Cat, a cat the color of fallen oak leaves.

There is blank space where my mind struggles to find something to think.

I think about —- and his careful and attentive questions about my well-being.

I think about —–, how I will get the job there. How I will be if I haven’t gotten the job.

I think about the oaks and pines outside my window and the pieces of the sky I see through their bare branches and needles.

I try to think of something to write, and I see nothing.

A cat the color of fallen oak leaves.

I think about visible and unrecognizable, the words that chose me for 2017. I wonder what words 2018 will bring me. I don’t see them. My mind says I can’t see them. Maybe they will see me as 2017’s words did.

Enough comes to mind. As in, “I am enough,” or “I have enough,” or “This is enough.” I am content to let this sit for now. It is enough.

A more visceral part says to me, “No. All this is true. And I am more. I can do more. I can be more.”

Enough and more? Similarly contraindicated as visible and unrecognizable. Not opposites. Not opponents. Co-workers. Collaborators. Co-conspirators.

Becoming visible was an act that made me unrecognizable to many. Becoming unrecognizable allowed me to be visible to many more.

Being enough can allow me to be more. Being more offers enough to others.

Yes. Maybe these are the words I need.

I am enough. We are all enough.

I have always been enough. We all have always been enough.

I have more. I am more. I offer more. Striving for more opens me to…

I go back to the blank mind. There are pieces of thoughts, glimmers of ideas floating about in there. I can almost see them. I can’t quite feel them. Beyond the list of what to do today, tomorrow, and next week, there are much grander thoughts. They need to be let out. Hoarding them produces a feeling of scarcity – if I let this into the world, there will never be another, and I will be without grand ideas. No. That’s not right. Letting them out into the world brings them friends and community. It allows expansion, the ideas grow and multiply.

Here is an idea:

What if each of us believes that we are enough?

And,

What if each of us believes that every other person is also enough?

We would all have more.