The pungent aroma.
The sting of grit clinging to skin. 
The creepy, crawling things writhing and wrestling.  

I've been spending plenty of time in the garden recently: preparing the beds, planting the seeds.  In my interactions with the dirt, I found myself pondering the contradictions within it.  

On the one hand: discomfort and disgust; mess and chaos.  
On the other hand: soft, soothing warmth; a satisfying, soulful connection to life-giving, life-sustaining earth.  

There are moments in life like dirt.
When everything becomes pungent.
And the creepy, crawling things surface..
And the grit clings to every crevice of our wrinkled souls.

Our first instinct in these messy moments may to recoil in repulsion, eagerly searching for a clean sink to wash our hands of it all.  Yet...these are the rich, fertile moments that enable us to plant something new.  If we can allow hope to shelter us like a well-worn sunhat, if we can place trust as a cushion beneath our aching knees, we can stay there beside the soil, tending to what is to come.
  
If you find yourself in a dirt-like moment:
Keep digging.  
Let your hands turn the warm, damp earth.  
Wipe the sweat from your brow with your dusty forearm that feels like sandpaper.

Then...Soon...

You can sit back with a glass of cold lemonade--water beading on the smooth surface, ice chiming.  You can survey the work you have done with a sense of satisfaction.  You can take a long hot shower, sighing in relief as your skin feels new again, as the water eases your aching muscles.

Then...hope.
Trust...soon.

Just when you are starting to doubt (or perhaps just when you've forgotten to look for it), a tender green shoot will rise from the pungent, gritty, creepy-crawly, warm, soothing, life-giving dirt.  

And you will rise along with it.     

Do you hear it?  
Honk.  Honk.

The geese have arrived in droves.
.
Crossing the street.
Flying overhead.
Guiding little goslings along the banks of the canal.
Even waddling through my front yard.  

I find them endearingly obnoxious.  Or perhaps obnoxiously endearing.  

Either way, geese impress me with their tenacious ability to get to wherever it is that they need to be.  

Geese don't study maps.
Or list the pros and cons of various destinations.  
Or analyze or assess or overthink.  

Geese don't have a clue as to why they are going where they are going or how precisely they are going to get there.  

They just do their goose-thing.  
They simply GO.  
And somehow, it all works out.

When it comes to the process of making change, I find it helpful to look to these loud-mouthed fowl for inspiration.  As humans, our great gift of intellect can also be our downfall.  We can become so enamored with our ability to think-things-through that we can forget to check in with our (so-called) baser instincts.  

While we'd like to believe that we can find the best direction using our high-powered brains, the truth is we can never fully anticipate, predict, and plan how to get to where we want to be.  

No matter how smart we are, our imagination is often limited by our past experiences.  We cultivate a lifetime of familiar patterns of thought, intended to help us function in our normal day-to-day existence.  As helpful and efficient as they are under ordinary circumstances, these same patterns of thought are typically too restrictive to fully envision the vast realm of alternative possibilities waiting to greet us.     

Fortunately, our thoughts aren't our only form of guidance.  We also have emotions, gut feelings, and intuition.  Our instincts can lead the way when logic falls short, if our minds are willing to relax and quiet down for a moment.

If you want to something in your life to be different, take a cue from the geese.  

Stop thinking.  
Stop analyzing.
Just look within.  

If you had to choose your path, without answering any of the "whys"...
where do you FEEL you truly want to go?

Take a deep breath.
Spread your wings.
Take flight (as best you can).  

And somehow, it will all work out.