"Should I Stay or Should I Go"

The art of lingering

©Orly Avineri

My heart is not for the ‘faint of heart’, nor for the ‘impatient’, and yours isn’t either, nor anyone else’s for that matter.

Any of my meetings with nature, or the nature of people, requires the deep knowledge that we are not different in any fundamental way, perhaps only in the details of us.

Any chance of reconciliation in such meeting, I will take. As of late, I’ve noticed. Time and again. An opportunity to be in the ‘continuation’ of my life, not in a beginning nor in an end, as they, for me, never truly exist.

Lies and truths lying by each other, side by side, sometimes one on top of another, at times under, and I for one, will sift through them, to find the values, the hues, the worthy nuances.

I will gladly bask in fantasy, as imagination is and always was my superpower, yet I will not shy away from reality. I want it. I crave it, with all its injuries and advancements.

My mother taught me how to ‘leave’ well. I became good at it. In fact I teach this to willing participants of workshops.

I know how to enter and how to exit fantastical scenarios. In my childhood, imagination was my savior, my trusted ally, my safe companion, my loyal care taker.

But now that I am almost fully grown up, imagination onto itself, no longer suffices. It is a sweet and pure escape, yes, yet in its inheritance, it hosts a troubled past, and a falsely concocted future.

If we could just linger here. In this place. And if I am able to stay in that state of mind, I almost always choose to stay. If this meeting is nourishing, replenishing, renewing, I will stay, even if achingly.

I want to make every moment of ‘making love’ to life, count. I want to stay, be in the fullness of the experiences I am currently in. I know that most ‘living’ things grow when I take time. My gardens taught me that. And some people.

More than anything these days I want to linger.

To savor each moment given to me.

To bask.

To marinate.

To stay a while.

Long enough.

To learn more.

To see more.

To understand more.

To get closer to the fire, the spirit of everything that is alive.

To Love.

In Conversations, with everything and everyone. And with time, and aging.

I want to live and love slowly.

To rest.

To breathe.

I want to master the art of ‘Staying’.

Staying for all the lessons, and sweetness that only comes when I stay awhile.

So yes, it takes the form of lingering with something, with someone, long enough to truly see it, the truths between us. The hidden. What stories want to be told, without forceful energy.

Staying with the events worthy of me staying, not going, not fleeing, not rushing out and away.

Staying long enough to get to the pearls hiding in the tough shells. In the shadows of emotional structures built in a lifetime.

Staying with myself long enough to change my own mind, my heart, to shift. To honor what is at this moment, this goodness. These divine offerings.

Becoming quiet. Feeling the depth of my breath, what it invites in as I inhale, and what it releases as I exhale.

Everything comes when I hush, and I shush, for a while longer.

There is a great protest, a grand kicking and a screaming, before any kind of love is allowed in. In what world should I not wait for it?

If I could just linger here. In this place.

And in this moment..and in my lingering I ask of me, and you:

Yes, in this moment can we please forget our pasts?

Yours? And mine?

Can we please forget our desires for a particular future?

Yours? And mine?

And I do believe with all my heart that if we can do this more often we’ll be okay. 

So okay.

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🤎🤍🖤

Orly