Vernal Equinox 2025

“To believe in timing, and to have faith in the procession of life to eventually make sense...is to have faith that maybe things are exactly the way they’re supposed to be."

Mandala 1: The Leap. © 2019 Phyllis Capanna

Happy Spring!

I just returned home from a 4-day visit to Massachusetts, where my bestie and I rocked a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle picturing General Mills cereal boxes that we broke out to pass the time while she recovered from knee replacement surgery. It turned out that working on the puzzle played to our complementary strengths in a way that Scrabble didn’t. I had to leave before it was finished, but I feel better for having had conversations that included the phrases cocoa crunch, yummy mummy, fruit brute and count chocula.

While we jockeyed around her dining room table, frowning and squinting over tiny pieces of cardboard, the occupational therapist in me felt a satisfying realization that this level of absorption and ease can only come from the perfect meeting of need, purpose, ability and challenge, existing in this exact moment.

Other major activities during my visit involved shopping, cooking and eating food. I got to shop in someone else’s regular grocery store. Yes, I have heart eyes for grocery stores, miracles of modern life that they are. I made four dozen paleo muffins (unfairly shorthanded as “the egg and banana muffins.”) I experimented with feeding myself differently so I can lose the weight that’s slowly attached itself to me in the past couple of years.

We talked weight loss, but actually, behavioral change, which is one of my love languages. I know that when I make real changes in my life, I am in a place where what actually matters can motivate me to find a way to build a bridge from an existing behavior pattern to a new one. And I know that when those things—being clear on my values, having motivation to change—are missing, I need to be patient with myself, because the time isn’t right yet.

Timing is everything, and timing is a God thing. That’s what’s been told to me in recovery, and that’s what I tell my sponsees. We don’t get to decide how slow or fast, or when something happens, even up to and including never and always. The when is the x-factor that either sweeps us up in our happy readiness or knocks us ass over tea kettle when we’re not expecting it. Changes we have to make because the moment demands it, not because we’re having a bright idea and feel like doing it, can be the most challenging. Also the most growth-inducing.

While I was in Massachusetts, I also visited another friend. When he gave me his address, I reacted with utter astonishment, sitting with my jaw literally hanging open, as I realized the facility name was that of a national chain of senior living facilities. “Oh,” I finally said, realization dawning, “He’s at Brookdale,” like cancer or, more likely, dementia.

Indeed, some subtle and not so subtle signs of memory loss were there in our conversation. But he seemed at peace and settled in his new place, and his personality hadn’t changed at all. He was still the personable, pleasant, kind and funny person I’d always known. I found myself much softer in my attitude towards him than I had been at the dawning of my mother’s dementia. I had nothing to be angry about, because, I suppose, it has little to do with me.

But it sure made me realize, as I drove away in my own car with my own brain intact (for the most part), that moments of connection, and making the effort to connect, are what I want my life to be about, for as long as I am able to make such choices for myself. And it also made me realize how much I love him, regardless of what he can and can’t remember or do for himself or for me.

Because we had made music together. We made an entire album of music together (along with three other terrific musicians), and holy goddess! am I glad we did. And because of that, because we have that record of what we created, because it’s out there in the universe forever and ever, and because of his enormous talent, and because it can never be again, he is one of my personal rock stars, in my personal pantheon of great people, and I will be forever grateful for what we shared.

You never know how important something you do today will become when enough of the particulars of life have changed that it feels like a completely new life. And then that thing you made or did, that change you embraced or struggled over, that transformation you unwittingly participated in—the ring, the graduation, the final project, that trip, the gift you gave, the potluck dinner where you met—becomes everything in a way it just wasn’t at the time.

To believe in timing, and to have faith in the procession of life to eventually make sense, and then to make keep making sense but in different ways, is to have faith that maybe things are exactly the way they’re supposed to be.

Maybe it’s okay that I spent three months this winter on my couch consuming, crocheting, writing, thinking and devouring novels. Maybe that was the time for that, and now is the time for now. Maybe I won’t waste my energy thinking back and regretting, because maybe it’s okay. Maybe it had to be. Maybe that was perfect for then. I certainly wasn’t ignoring the call to do something else, but I did have the guilty shoulds about it the whole time. Maybe those months will shift and become something else in time, fitting into a new reality in ways I can’t predict right now.

Mandala 28: Confidence. ©2019 by Phyllis Capanna

I listen for my desires to make themselves known, those pulls on the heart that say, “Ooh! I want that.” Those wordless feelings of longing, the full-hearted admiration for someone who is somewhere you want to be. I listen for those things now, but I used to avoid them out of the utter conviction that I could never achieve anything. I counted myself out all the time. In avoiding them I reinforced my lack of confidence, in myself, sure, but also in Whatever-You-Call-It that orchestrates the grand timing of things.

I listen for those longings because that’s my heart telling me what matters. And when I do that, the leaps don’t seem as unwieldy, and worrying over the distance from where I am to where I want to be is superseded by fascination with the journey itself and with the joy of learning.

When I started writing this, I was thinking about the satisfaction and privilege of acting in accordance with our values and how sometimes we discover our values by what we choose to do. But sometimes, we are taken unawares by a gust of spontaneity that comes from an even deeper, more mysterious place.

Creating—and all of living—is an improvisation, a collage, a brainstormed list, a jigsaw puzzle that is constantly reshaping its pieces, alternately jagged and mismatched, then seamlessly fitting together.

Collage, improv and brainstorming are first cousins in the creative/living process, where you take what comes and make something of it. An actual collage, once assembled, is static. But if the pieces aren’t glued down, they can shift into ever more mesmerizing beautiful patterns, like a kaleidoscope. An improv lives on only in memory, but only if it’s memorable. The improv that got our band into the permanent arrangements of the songs we recorded is long forgotten.

Improv is a way of throwing things out there until you get an answering impulse from the Universe. It’s rock ’n’ roll dancing. It’s shooting the breeze and snorting liquid out your nose in laughter. It’s unpracticed. But there is a technique to it, a way of training to be better at improv, where you learn to listen to your instincts, and you learn how to be a good partner, supporting their expression. It’s non-competitive. It’s cooperative. It’s cooperating with life.

And then there’s simple brainstorming, just letting ideas come out and accepting each one with equal standing.

All of these are ways of saying yes to what’s given, ways of facing things and working with them. Ways of engaging imagination to create something new. Ways of trusting the Source of ideas and impulses, trusting expression as valid. Ways of suspending judgment until more of the pattern and sense become clear.

Wherever you’re at right now, I wish you the trust and patience to believe in and wait for the sense of your moment to become clear to you. I wish peace to those in your circle who are struggling with new realities and limitations, either temporary or permanent, knowing that temporary and permanent will switch places with time. I wish you the strength to act accordingly when your heart tells you what matters. Whether you’re cohering smoothly or jumbling uncontrollably, as your pieces scatter and come together again, I wish you faith in yourself to live it well, and I wish you good connections to hold and teach and sustain you.

With love,

Phyllis

Mandala 11: Affirmation © 2019 by Phyllis Capanna