Trees Fall

How mindfulness protects us. 

I was kayaking - a lazy, quiet, holiday weekend paddle - when suddenly just a few yards from where we had just been, a tree comes crashing down out of nowhere!  

Yep.  

Both my husband and I stopped paddling and stared in silence.  I figured it must be one of those moments for a profound thought about fate.  But nothing really came to mind.  We just looked as the waves around it slowly disappeared.   My husband shrugged and said, “trees fall”.  I nodded.  We turned and paddled on. 

If a tree falls in the forest (or in this case water)…  Perhaps the question is not as much about the sound it makes in the air, but instead the sound it makes in our mind.  Had this been a midweek paddle, mind full of checklists and todo’s, that tree sound probably would have startled the heck out of me.  I might have screamed as that tree sound fell right into the middle of my full thoughts.  Heart leaping, stomach dropping, feeling the effects of it for the rest of the paddle.   Or had we been arguing down the river, angry and hurt and mean over nothing/everything.  That tree sound might have felt like an ice cold wave, shaking sense into you.  The tingling and shivering tensing your body up for the rest of the trip. 

But because this was a slowed-down holiday weekend paddle, all this tree sound did was ring around inside my empty, calm mind for a bit.  Like the waves it made, the sound moved through and then onward.  There was space - created from a quiet, mindful paddle - which worked like a big billowy mind-cushion.  

Trees fall.  Crappy life stuff happens.  And the next time it does, I’m going to try to have my mind-cushion securely in place.     

Until next time,

Laura

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