“There is no need to arrive somewhere—each step is the arrival to concentration, joy, insight, and the momentary enlightenment of aliveness.” -Thích Nhất Hạnh, How To Walk

                I’ve been saying I feel tired lately. Wondering how to recharge my energy. Then last week I walked with my friend, and they told me they don’t think “energy” is really a thing. Or it’s not what I usually pretend it is, at least. A living body isn’t a battery, it doesn’t have a single kind of electrical charge poured in and pulled out to turn the fan blades or shine the light. Instead of having energy to carry us through and keep us going and create with, my friend and I started talking about all the different things that lift us in our lives.
                Joy. Joy is one for me. And pleasure, which is why I start reaching for something tasty when I’m struggling with a project and telling myself keep going. Concentration, that act of bending my thoughts in one direction—focus on the keyboard, not the wind in from the window. After enough concentrating my mind wants to swim off, more a dozen minnows in a lake than a single sailing ship with a rudder. Or wants to drift, dandelion puffs on the sky. For me there’s also a sense of performing, of putting myself together to show some certain side. After enough of that I’m in my boxers with messy hair.And curiosity: a pull toward why and what and wow, but sometimes that pull fades, or I’ve asked too much from it, and it goes quiet. Silence. That’s another thing that carries me. And love, alive in so much of what I do, and fear, alive in so much of what I do (as I try to help), and the shadows where love and fear aren’t currently lapping. So joy, pleasure, concentration, performance, curiosity, love, fear…strand by strand, I’m untying the knot, touching all the threads I usually pretend are just energy.
                Which means tired (and awake) aren’t a single somewhere I leave behind, or get to. The dance has more steps than that, and more stillnesses.