Centered heart SheSaid: Tami Mohamed Brown comes out of her funk
Tami Mohammed Brown.
I felt grateful and fortunate-despite the gray and the cold and the snow-to have found a solid and real centering point, a place to nudge me back into my heart.
by Tami Mohamed Brown
By the middle of winter-even with the lengthening days, with the hope of light and warmth in the not-so-far-off future-I find myself in a little bit of a funk. The holiday season is long passed and the temperatures are low, the days gray. I hibernate, isolating myself inside, feeling lethargic and disconnected.
Those feelings had been unshakable for at least a week when I woke up one Sunday morning, my family still sleeping. Rather than wake anyone, I ventured outside alone, not quite knowing what I was looking for. We didn't need groceries and I'd already had a morning cup of coffee-both standard, typical reasons to draw me out on a weekend winter morning.
Instead of driving, I found myself walking down the sidewalk without a determined destination. I continued to walk, directionless, and felt the air, crisp and hard on my face, my eyes watering from the cold and realized I hadn't been outdoors for the last few weeks. I realized I hadn't done anything, really, except travel between home and work, a routine that felt like a worn rut instead of a pleasant groove, the same streets, the same schedule, the circuitous repetition.
Finally, about a mile from my home, I realized where I was headed.
I had discovered it earlier in the fall, after spotting a woman meditating on a bench during the rush hour. Because Penn Avenue had seemed such an unlikely place to find relaxation, I had doubled back later to scope out the site and was thrilled by what I felt I had uncovered.
There, only steps from the busy street, was a labyrinth, a path for walking with a design that looks much like a maze, but differs in that it has no dead ends. Instead, the labyrinth has a single path, a path that leads into the center and back out, and although it twists and winds its way to the center, there are no wrong choices or tricks. You can't get lost, or stuck. To reach your destination, to reach the center, all you have to do is follow the path.
The reason for walking, for me, is a head clearing. The labyrinth is a redirective, a place to center myself, ironically enough, from the center, a place from which I often leave with a sense of clarity.
I crunched my way off the sidewalk and across the lawn to find the labyrinth covered by a light blanket of snow. I removed a large branch, a plastic soda bottle, an abandoned red mitten, tossing them just outside the circle. It wasn't what I had expected. I had, of course, expected my walk to be effortless, the path completely clear. But this was different.
Here and there were stones capping the snow, marking the route, but the path itself wasn't in full view, wasn't apparent or obvious to the eye. Had I never walked it before, I may have left, frustrated.
Instead, I began my walk following the path by what I remembered and by what made sense to me, as there were no other footprints marking the way, no one else's prompts to guide me.
When I reached the center, I looked back at my tracks, the looping spiral pattern in the snow that my boots had formed to reach the center.
Maybe I had missed the point of the labyrinth, guessing my way along a path that was half-covered by snow.
But maybe, in doing so, I'd jump-started something else, beginning my day with more intention and with purpose, paying closer attention and feeling present, instead of starting the day as a checklist of destinations and tasks to be accomplished and conquered. I felt grateful and fortunate-despite the gray and the cold and the snow-to have found a solid and real centering point, a place to nudge me back into my heart.
As I made my way back across the snowcovered lawn to the sidewalk, a car pulled into the nearly-empty adjacent church parking lot. A woman, bundled in a long coat, boots and a scarf got out of the car and quickly trudged her way through the snow.
Would my path make sense to her? Probably not. But did it matter?
She was there with her own agenda, her own purpose. Not mine.
I looked back, the street still quiet, as she stood at the entrance of the labyrinth, pausing, and then entered, walking, it seemed, with intention.
Tami Mohamed Brown lives in Bloomington with her family.
