I am fond of words that start with E. I have two names that begin with E so perhaps it began there. I just like them better than other words that start with other letters. I can’t really say why. I just do. The way you have a preference for spring over fall or winter over summer. There are reasons for your preference but where did those preferences begin? One can never really know.
So today’s blog showcases yet another E word I am fond of...Elide. It is an incongruent word as it means to omit and to merge together. Usually it is used to say that a syllable or sound is dropped when speaking. But it has also become used as a description of what is actually happening, there is a merging of sounds together, by the omission of that syllable or sound.
And as usual, I love words, most especially when they begin with E.
But the word caused me to think, to elide concepts in my mind about how I am the way I am and how so very much of who I am today came about because I omitted a few things along the way, and that allowed for a merging of forces to grow me up into this version of me that I am currently living.
So it would appear, that all growth, personal or otherwise, occurs because we omit things. We stop doing certain things, we begin doing others so the cessation of one activity must occur for another to take its place. That is just the nature of things. And once we refrain, or omit, then we begin a whole new process of merging our old life with our current one.
Growing takes time and it is interesting to me that we are always merging new behaviors with old, constantly. It never seems to stop. Etching new patterns and ways of living over our worn out and tired patterns, invigorating new life into the old one. So much change is happening all the time and it always begin with us becoming willing to omit something to allow the egress of something new to merge.
Right now I am struggling to fit my meditation and yoga practice into my routine. I am an extremely efficient person. I do not like to do things out of a sensible order and I do not like to have to undo or redo things. So my current order of the day doesn’t work because I am getting up, getting dressed then having to come home and take my shoes off and go sit still. Once I am in motion, it is really hard to stop. So I either need to get up earlier (which isn’t likely to happen given my hibernating tendencies come the winter light and my increased need to be still and slumbering). So I have tried to add it to my evening routine but I don’t really have one, except to dash into my bed as quickly and as early as I can once the light of day fades to black.
What is really happening is that I want to avoid myself. And when I want to avoid myself, I do not meditate or yoga. And often, I do not write. My life long pattern of running away from myself is perpetuated even though I am not really going anywhere. And it all starts with eliding...
I omit the practice in the morning, which allows me just to merge into my day. Moving forward. Then I omit it at night so that I can merge into slumber. And the result is that I am missing my meditative time. Time that I desperately need and want. I do not want to run from myself anymore. I have found my own company in the ensuing years to be quite pleasant and almost preferable to the company of most others, some people and cats excluded.
So I elide through life. And it is good. Omission and merging from one version of myself into another. Day after day, year after year. Happier in my living and existence than ever before. And I am reminded once again that my growth always seems to come with a subtraction, an omission, a refraining. It must begin there. My natural tendency to overdo and overcomplicate and over add, only kept in balance by a cessation of activity or thinking or being, making room for something new to merge into my life, enriching it, emboldening it, enlarging it into some new ethos that I never saw coming.
And after re-reading this blog, I am happy with it and all the E words I have used to make it happen. Win/Win!
