WHAT'S YOUR PEACEFUL PLACE?
Dear Ones –
Last weekend I went home to Connecticut to visit my parents, and we went for a long walk through the familiar woods of my childhood. We came to this bridge, where I hadn't been in more than twenty years — except that I visit it often in memory.
Whenever someone asks me what the happiest moment of my life was, I think about this bridge. It was June of 1984, and school had just let out for summer. I walked to this bridge with my friend Kerry — to this swimming hole where we kids often hung out. It was a wam, sunny day. We climbed to the top of the bridge and stretched out there, sunning ourselves like turtles.
I've always been a busy person, even as a kid, and I remember being overcome with this feeling that I had, for once, NOTHING TO DO. The summer stretched ahead of me like a sweet promise. I don't think I had ever been so relaxed in my life up until that point, and I have not often been so relaxed since!
Whenever I can't sleep, or am overcome with worry, or even when I'm just trying to meditate, I return in my imagination to that day, that bridge, the water beneath me, the sun on my face, the sense of peace and the absence of urgency.
It was lovely to go back and visit this place in person, and find it unchanged.
Happy.
So what's your peaceful place? Where do you go, either in actuality or in memory, when the world closes in?
Heart,
LG
