Breadcrumbs

February 25, 2025

Flowed have I here. Not run, nor marched, nor coerced. Flowed. On waves both strong and calm, in skies both stormy and clear. No plan my mind designed wove my path, and no built-up expectation found here its satisfaction. In a place of flowing surprise live I, and bit by bit, day by day, my mind and nervous system learn to trust that the flow of the seemingly random waves leads us true. Gentle, sudden, resonant - the waves bring me the full extent of their spectrum, and I learn to listen. Day by day by day.

I find myself the steward of a large villa in the mountains on an island in Greece, together with my wife Tilda. We learn to live in flow together, and we share the fears and the delights that we experience thereby. I find this experience is truly that of love. That of which gradually bonds two human beings into a larger being. We share our fears and we no longer hide them, we share our joys and its brilliant flow courses through us in resonant delight. We share our habits and we learn from each other. We share how we feel and think and act, the tiny details in our consciousness, and we realize how similar, even identical, our life essences are, and we see in each other the mirror of ourselves, showing us in full display what we are like when we feel worthy, when we feel insecure, when we feel joyful, when we feel vulnerable. I see my own needs and desires and insecurities reflected in her, and I know them to be the same as mine because I feel resonance when we connect at that depth, and she allows herself to be seen as she is - raw, true, unhidden and fearless to be seen by me, and the clear lesson I listen from Life itself is "Love". "Love". "Love those needs and desires and insecurities in yourself as much as you urge to love them in her, as you desire to let her have an open space to shed her tears and speak her words and yell and laugh her emotions out, as you desire to allow her to BE who she is, as you feel compassion for her, guided by this game of human mirrors... Love. Love yourself just like that too. For she is you, fashioned into your partner so you may help each other and play".

Day by day our habits dance with one another, as strands and shards of us are slowly revealed - even to ourselves. Through knowledge of the other we grow bolder, through recognition of ourselves in the other we grow kinder. Step by step we align our purposes, as they meld to become one. The purpose of the both, the purpose of the family. Our family. Together we grow a family, together we welcome a child. And I understand now (more) the importance that the family holds in our human race. Honored by society and revered by religions: the family manifests the creation of the new life from the union of opposites. It expresses the critical recursive step of that literal fractal of which humanity is but one branch: the Tree of Life. Creation. Generation. The offering of oneself and of one's body, skills, presence, and purpose to the building of the new, which like the partner, also reflects to us more of what we are. Or so I surmise (still).

Our unborn child is truly our guiding star. It guides us to find a country to travel to, a house to live in, the people to connect with. It guides our actions and it guides our priorities. And along the way we see, once and again and again, breadcrumbs we feel are left for us to follow the fortunate path. That gently reminds us that there IS a fortunate path, and that we need but listen and trust the wisdom of the self, the quiet certainty of the heart, to guide us true across our meandering, surprise-sprinkled path.

We see the crumbs in the little girl's sweater on the street as we came back home to Ellikon. We see the crumbs in Tilda's sister's baby gift. We see the crumbs in our doula's rag doll. In a perfectly-timed shooting star. In my sister's oblivious congratulations note. In a leftover soccer ball in our new house, on the used pink play rug we bought second-hand, on the walls of our new house's bedroom wall, and today on our midwife's sweater. Clear as crystal, our child's mark again and again, inspiring both slight disbelief and laughing smiles in us, for we do not seek them; they merely show up for us again and again and again. And we are re-fueled with joy and with laughter, and are glad to take our next steps with trust in the life that we dance day by day, that we learn, which we meld, and which we create out of ourselves. We are the flowing, growing, seeking, consuming, melding, spawning, recurring Life. Unrestrainable Nature. And the method whereby it aligns, joins, grows, and creates itself is Love.