Embracing the Tree of Life

Since childhood I have enjoyed taking things slowly. Being the third child and the youngest in the family, I was allowed the luxury of being slower than the others. It was actually part of the role I played in my family. Being the smallest child, it was necessary to support the illusion that the bigger people were more capable, smarter and faster to maintain their important role in my life. Having said that, I was also criticized for being slower, for taking too much time to watch the butterfly as I followed its flight from flower to flower, for stopping to watch the worms wiggle in the earth searching for food and for wanting to rest on the tree stumps in the forest that seemed to be perfect chairs calling out to me to play house.

I quickly got the message that these activities of mine were to prove very frustrating to the bigger people in my life. Our healthy weekend walks in the mountains had a time constraint, a purpose and a goal so I learned that I had to start walking faster and to keep up for the others not to be angry and frustrated or feel they failed at achieving what they had set out for on that day. I learned that to be in the moment, mesmerized by the activity of a tiny multiple-legged spider making an intricate web, was a waste of precious time. Time did not exist for me as a child. It was something manufactured by adults. I disco-vered my life by how I felt at the moment and that one moment alone.

I started to believe that what I felt and did was childish. I knew that one day I would have to admit that those natural flowing rhythms of mine, which were beating at the beat of their own drum, including my moods, would not be acceptable, that they would get in the way of achieving something really important. I was never sure however what that was. It just felt like everyone was running, feverishly, after something that was very important. Sometimes it felt like I was watching adults in a mad race that had no finish line; which left all participants feeling like losers as if there was always someone or something ahead of them that they had to catch up to or surpass.

I don’t believe I ever knew anyone to have fully found that “something”; it rather felt like they just hated themselves for failing to achieve, possess and acquire that “something”, though they had put so much energy into trying to shape and control an outside existence into what might be considered successful by outside measures. I noticed how adults in search of that something filled their lives with valuable and non-valuable possessions to try to fill the void within. They tried all kinds of so-called winning “solutions” such as working at the perfect job, achieving some kind of status, developing relationships, getting married, having kids, owning a perfect home... When none of these seemed to “do it”, during the hard times, they would look towards a healthier or more spiritual path that they hoped would hold “the answer” or “the way” that would lead to that elusive something.

I did witness that relief came to some along the way. Usually, after an illusion of failure; after failing to attain the intended result of those winning solutions; after having worked so damn hard at it; afterhaving put their heart and soul and best foot forward, people began to question their worth, their importance and whether they were good enough. It is then that life seems to slow down because the pain inside becomes so loud that people start to listen to that long lost voice of their more natural rhythms, to that voice inside that wants to be heard. Sometimes it takes a huge failure such as loss of health, family or wealth. On such occasions life, or whatever else it takes, just stops on its own. Then, small pieces of that “something” show up. It seems to me that that “something” is a long lost part of themselves; their truer non-manufactured self.

It seems to me that I chose that same path; took part in the same mad race; tried with all my might to be something and someone I was not in order to expe-rience and discover a truer me. This journey has helped me to grant myself the permission to slow down, to listen in, so that I could resonate and vibrate to the beat of my own heart.

Marie-Noëlle Gagnieux