Vachon Imagined

I often wake up and my mind is in disarray.

I’m fighting. Deciding. Arguing with imaginary people. Solving problems that do not yet exist.

My temperament is a bit like scrambled eggs on fire—unorganized, messy, and frankly, dangerous.

I am not even on my feet yet and my mind is racing around like a car without brakes, swerving through old memories, future concerns, and stories that have no business being told at six in the morning.

It’s just the way of life.

It is, until it isn’t.

It is, until it comes to rest.

Once I get up, start moving, have my coffee, and allow my body to wake up, I am almost a different person. The storm passes. The sky clears.

Yet I remain fascinated by that earlier thunderstorm.

Where does it come from?

Why does it arrive before I’ve even had the chance to participate in my day?

Over the years I have noticed that my body often knows before my mind does. When something is off, I become less patient. Less forgiving. More reactive.

Normally, my patience with my son stretches farther than most people would believe possible. But every once in a while, after I’ve helped him with something, he gives me one of those dramatic huffs or dismissive scoffs that children seem uniquely gifted at producing.

And suddenly I can feel a fire rise inside me that would make anyone take notice.

It happens.

I do not apologize for the existence of that fire because I did not create it.

I live in it.

I live with it.

Like every other human being, I inherited a nervous system, a body, a mind, a history, and a thousand unconscious movements that arrive before I have the chance to choose them.

The choice comes afterward.

People often assume mindfulness and meditation belong to naturally peaceful people.

That has never been my experience.

I practice because I need to.

I practice because I have watched my own mind long enough to know what it is capable of.

And in that practice I have witnessed something profound.

I am my thoughts.

And I am not.

I am the anger.

And I am the one watching the anger.

I am the storm.

And I am the sky in which the storm appears.

When the fire begins to take over, I often say a single word:

God.

Not as a plea.

Not as an escape.

But as a reminder.

A reminder of wholeness.

A reminder of life.

A reminder of beauty, unity, and the reality that whatever is happening in me is still happening within something larger than me.

So I say the word again.

And again.

And again.

Not to destroy the storm, but to remember the sky.

The dog still bites sometimes.

The mind still races.

The fire still rises.

But now there is space around it.

And in that space there is choice.

The same choice exists when others are not at peace.

When someone is angry.

When someone is impatient.

When someone speaks from their own storm.

We are given a choice.

Do we hold them accountable?

Or do we let them pass?

Both choices have their place.

Both can be expressions of wisdom.

Both can emerge from love.

The deeper question is not what choice we make.

The deeper question is whether we are making it consciously.

Because life is not asking us to become free of the storm.

Life is asking us to discover the awareness that remains whether the storm is raging or still.

And that awareness has been quietly waiting beneath every thought all along.