It's Amazing What You Can Learn from a Song

Not everybody would expect to gain encouragement from a doom metal song.

But I did.

I don't typically discuss what I give up for lent, because it seems almost like either bragging or making too light of something that should seriously matter. The last two years,since I've bee practicing it, I gave up chocolate for lent. One I gave up heavy and dark music also. THAT was hard. Lent isn't supposed to about making yourself miserable though, its supposed to be about growing up, maturing on the inside. It's supposed to be a season of inner growth and of getting rid of things that need to go out of your life. I'm trying to give up pushing to hard and driving myself toward goals with too much obsession and fervor.

I'm in the middle of getting demoted, I think. I expect it anyway. I am not well enough to do this new job, my foot is killing me, I think I have bone spur, and it's being on feet 12 hours a day, on concrete. That on top of anxiety was a bad enough mix, my brain apparently got so flooded with cortisol (stress hormone), there were moments I couldn't even read. It feels like, yet again, growth has been thwarted, frost has come and killed off what I had growing.

I listened to this song, "The Arrival" by Skepticism, which I've heard a bunch of times before, yet I never really heard it like this. Lyrics as follows.

Skepticism

Arrived autumn
With a visit uninvited
And by chill slowly growing
With a lesson fully dreadful
And by message all displeasing

Then arrived autumn
With a growing understanding
And by vision slowly clearing
With belief calmly growing
And by readiness to embrace

Then arrived autumn
With unpleasant companion
And with frost overwhelming
With a lack of will to stand still
And with movement backwards drawing

Then arrived Autumn
Not the light of spring to follow
Nor a summer nor a winter
With autumn tints the forests glowing
And with leaves newly falling

Then arrived
I to visit uninvited
With a message to me ageless
Carrying the understanding
Year of autumns one to embrace

I listened to it several times, and realized what a wonderful message is in it, and how timely it is for me now. I never have given up on my dreams, but that shouldn't mean that everything I do is to get back what the frost has killed off. "Lack of will to stand still," boy can I relate. Like I said, I'm trying to give up pushing to hard for lent, because it's killing me, it is more often than not just driving me crazy. I need to enjoy the autumn, enjoy the time when things aren't going my way, when it seems like I'm going backwards.
It is good to not give up but I have to stop pushing for Spring to come in the middle of another season. Hating the frost that comes killing everything you're working on is understandable, but still try to at least enjoy the color in the trees. Embrace the season, even if it is winter. Accept the timing and wait for your Spring, whenever it comes. That's what I shall try to do for lent and, hopefully, thereafter.

Godspeed.

~Mother star.