Savouring Softness
Walking down to the dam – which is not a dam at the moment – I feel the softness of the earth beneath my bare feet. The wet ground gives way as each foot connects with the once hardened earth. It is an unhurried walk – I’m savouring the soft sinking as Nimrod cat explores. Cats walk with far more care and caution than dogs. He too, as Rupert dog did, sniffs selected blades of grass and bushes in great detail. There are spores of the grey mongoose that we’ve seen about, indents of duiker prints, some scats of a porcupine. So much investigating to be done on Nimrod’s part.
It’s the first heavy rains for many months. The previous rains disappeared into the dry earth. Within half an hour it was if no rain had ever fallen – only the short-lived fragrance of hot earth touched by rain. As the season transitions to coolness, these heavy rains are an invitation to the dormant seeds and bulbs to start awakening. In a few weeks, the brown earth will become abundantly green.
Water is the element connected to emotions. Holding onto emotions causes much hardness in one’s body. Physically one becomes rigid – shoulders become heavy, backs stiff and inflexible, aching. Inside organs become sluggish and sometimes seize up Like the earth, which without the flow of the water, would remain rock hard – we need our emotions to flow, to soften, to be released.
The process of healing is connected to one’s relationship with emotions. We hold onto our stories with emotions – or perhaps is it that our emotions hold onto our stories. There are also times when the emotions are so freely expressed that they control our lives. I read once that you know that healing has happened when one can tell the story and it no longer makes one cry.