Breaking patterns, shaking sameness

By JoAnne Young

 

Can something be welcome and unsettling at the same time? The feel of fall is a little like that for me. I am ready for changes, but know it will come in bits and chunks, like waking up to a temperature that requires pawing through the closet and drawers for long sleeves and sweatshirts, only to go back a step to short sleeves and short pants a few days later.  

 

A week ago, I was shaken from sleep with a strong eagerness for change. People were returning to their homes and their routines from faraway places they had gone in the warmth and freedom of summer. I had traveled, too, but to more familiar, comfortable places. Pleasant as could be, easy, but not bold or gutsy. 

 

I know the brain craves patterns, a sense of control of our environment. Patterns in nature and in us have repeated and repeated since as far back as we know. Those patterns can be beautiful. The star pattern runs from the oceans to the heavens. Spirals twist around nature and humans. Computer algorithms try to compete with the workings of the mind. 

 

But breaking a few patterns seems necessary sometimes. Fall couldn’t have come soon enough. The summer warmth was becoming artificial. The freedom was hinting at boredom.

 

I wanted real warmth, the kind that comes from inside, somewhere in the gut and the heart,  and radiates out. Identifying as a Five and Four on the Enneagram Type Indicator, I tend to be studious, quiet, an observer more often than a participant, sometimes a little too introspective.  I spend my time in solitary activities – reading, writing, photography. I love them, but the isolation or social distancing that comes with them can be exhausting. 

 

I don’t know where my feelings go in the summer. They simmer somewhere out there ... wanting to hide from heat, the screech of grackles and starlings, from air conditioning and having to get up at 5 in the morning to see a sunrise. By August, my tide is low and ebbing. 

 

But here we are, just a couple of weeks away from the fall equinox, when balance occurs, when days and nights, light and darkness, are about equal.  That’s a good signal for me to seek balance, too, in my own dark and light, complexity and simplicity, aloneness and camaraderie, work and play.

 

It’s time for me to emulate the balance toys I love, letting the patterns and unexpected both find a home here. 

 

The universe is already giving me a hand with that equilibrium. Two dear friends, somehow without knowing, spontaneously texted Saturday afternoon and invited me and my husband to watch the Husker game on their patio and eat homemade pizza cooked magnificently on the grill. It was exactly what I needed. God bless them and God bless Husker football and fall-ish nights on the patio listening to avid fans in the neighborhood set off booming fireworks for every Big Red score. 

 

I have lately become inspired by Joni Mitchell, herself a Four, who sought a change in her own ennui, feelings of weariness and dissatisfaction, by leaving her popular music routine, which she called her hit department, and crossing the road to find her art department. She didn’t want her music, her life, to stay in one key, one modality, so she pushed forward, she evolved. She took a leap and recorded The Hissing of Summer Lawns, a breakout album.

 

My life is not that dramatic, and neither will my autumn be. Mine will be incremental, like a change of the season that fades from hot to cool to cold to warm. I don’t plan to jerk the steering wheel to one side to the other, but gradually navigate myself out of a rut. 

 

When the sun in the fall equinox hits its balance, I hope to be on my way. Some days, as the light shrinks, I will seek some imbalance, favoring discomfort or inconsistency or the unreasonable. 

 

Talk to three strangers a day for a week (or more). 

Let a spider crawl up my arm. 

Sleep until 10 a.m. (Yikes) 

Not judge the man at the lake running in a thong. (He must have had his reasons.)

 

Maybe I’ll start with those letters I’ve been procrastinating writing for the past couple of years. Wouldn't it be lovely to make some sort of little magic happen every day. 

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