My Bliss

I realized my bliss Sunday. People say to follow your bliss. One of my favorite quotes is "Let yourself be silently drawn by the greater pull of what you really love." Life is about becoming aware of those moments when you realize you're being drawn by what you really love.

I was sitting in my garden on Sunday when I had a bliss moment and I let myself be acutely aware of it. I hadn't showered that day. To me a hot shower is like most people's morning coffee yet I relish a weekend day of dirtiness. My hair was in prime Bob Dylan disarray and curl. I was wearing comfy cotton pants that had, over the course of a morning of yard work and then gardening, had become covered in dirt. I was breaking up clumps of dirt with my bare hands so my nails were filled with the stuff. Every wrinkle of skin on my hands were brown.

The sun was setting and the air still warm. The temperature was at that just right point of warm enough for short sleeves, but not so warm you were sweating. Half the garden was completed and I was at the level on the ground where some plants were taller than me.

A worm crawled across the ground where I had just laid down a layer of fresh compost. I looked at the scoop I was just about to spread. Dirt I made. I made that dirt! The worm stretched out across the warm soil. I thought, "That would make a good fishing worm. If I were 12 again I'd pick it up and hold it." So, I picked up the worm and let it crawl across my hand. I watched him, looked up around me. I thought about the perfect weather, the perfect amount of dirt worked into my toes and hands and I just felt right. I felt whole and content. In that moment, the work I had done to grow the plants that were around me, the dirt I was holding, came together with the potential of the plants I had just put in and the life in the soil the worm meant. I was right in the middle of it all.

That's my bliss.