Much lately in the news and in my dialogues about what it means to be a woman, to Lean In, to think (I frame as male) and to feel (I frame as female). There is a balance between how we think about something and how we feel about it. Sometimes when asked about an issue, I will request clarification. “Do you want to know how I think about that or how I feel?” It seems unusual that I can partition these. What I realize, though, is that most people are less nuanced about this. Their feelings and thoughts are combined or mishmashed together. They are not always INTEGRATED. It is my journey to improve my integration. It is largely why I elected to be an osteopath rather than a mainstream MD. While I practice fairly mainstream family medicine, there is a groundedness in how I do my work that I found and cultivated by going to osteopathic school. Could I have harnessed this aspect of my nature through the more orthodox allopathic schools? Its possible for others but maybe not for me.
And the universe hands you the most unexpected gifts some mornings. But that is the nature of gift giving, right? It is unexpected and unpredictable and often EXACTLY what you had wished for, even if secretly and privately. My new subscription to The Sun magazine started and the new issue came this week. It languished on the dining room table waiting for the time to be read and digested. It is not a discourse to be gobbled while standing and shoveling a bowl of corn Chex in my pie whole. No! The Sun is chock-a-block full of provocative and insightful articles, essays and poems that requires slow digestion and a mind space at leisure. I read the interview with Philip Sheppard yet I am still reading it and digesting it. I will re-read it. And I hope to find some one with whom I can talk about it. My mind reels and zings around tangents. About doing work, being creative. About raising sons who can think and feel and are open to the hero and not the tyrant. I think about gastric bypass surgery and the epidemic of obesity in our country. I think about all our exercise and yet we are so disconnected – from each other, from our emotions, from ourselves, from our guts. And then I think about that word “guts”. The gut feeling. To have guts. It is to know something just because and to be able to act just because. Guts are what make us ACT way before we think, to love before it’s rational or easy. To commit even when distance, time, age or income divide us. No guts, no glory. Right? This house I have is not just a house. Its about guts. Knowing that I feel a certain way and wanting a space that enhances, embellishes, augments and amplifies those feelings. A place to be boundless. To let it hang out. And what is ‘it’? That is our belly, the proverbial unbuttoning and un-notching of the belt. The letting go.
This space, this morning, this span of universe is where I explore the balance between my head and my gut….and learn to reside in my heart, the balance point of myself. To live whole-heartedly is to find that balance between head and gut. Passion and reason. Contemplation and creativity. It’s called home.