[title credit: wisdom maven Joni Mitchell]

Something I’ve been struggling and awing over lately is life’s ability to be two opposites, at once. But hey, that’s me right now ain’t it? I’m a girl getting nail polish AmazonPrimed to her log cabin in Wyoming. I’m a person who honestly feels her two strongest pulls of gravity arise from Nordstrom on Michigan Avenue and the little glacial lake down the road. That this is true is something that gives me pride. Why then can’t I easily form the same reverence for all of life’s opposites?

There are the external opposites, what you see when you open your eyes. Like the first snow that fell this past weekend, and the 50 degrees it restrained. Now I look at the frosted mountaintops and feel one part glee and one part resentment. I just thought I’d get more time to swing from one dynamic to the other. And no amount of excitement for the Winter and all of the rare beauties and adventures it holds really takes away from the thought that– life is going to be different now. It sends me looking for a pause button that doesn’t exist. For a way to have, at once, the summer sun on the porch and the sparkling snow on the valley floor.

Now the internal opposites, what you feel when you are struggling to get back to center. These are really a doozy. These are the feelings of wanting to be different yet wanting to be like everybody else. Going to a coffeeshop to be around people, and then putting your headphones in. These are even the feelings of love and hate, acceptance and rejection. The poles of our emotional batteries which seem miles apart but are actually close enough to touch. I’d love to be just the right amount of ordinary, just the right amount of social, just the right amount of independent and held.

But I’m never going to find the exact middle of all these things, and even if I did would I be able to tell? To feel the ease I think I would?

Per usual, song lyrics speak my mind better than I ever could. So I’ll leave it with this opening verse from my new favorite guys The Milk Carton Kids, and their cover of “Wish You Were Here”:

So, so you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell

Blue skies from pain

Can you tell a green field

From a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

Moment of Gratitude: I think I love these opposites, I think I’m worried by these opposites, I think I learn from these opposites.