Why begin with a calendar?

Written by Rachael Skyring

Rachael Skyring is a curious woman. AuDHD (very late diagnosed). Committed carer. Over thinker. Sensitive feeler. Stubborn AF. With postgraduate degrees in Astrophysics and Rocket Science, she's spent the last twenty years as mostly a Mum, the last ten honing her metaphysical quantum brain surgery skills through mindful movement and embodiment practices. Whoever you want to be, and wherever you want to go, Rachael can start you on your way. The sky's the limit. Let's begin!

14 December 2019

It has taken me some time (lol) to discover the answer to this simple question.

I begin with a calendar because it is a tangible collection of moments in time.  It can be scaled up and down.  It seems infintely flexible and customisable to the needs of the individual – and our various relationships – to people, places and things.  All of them can be marked in a calendar.  

The most important things, perhaps, are the regular things, that don’t even go in the calendar.  Whose preeminent position is assumed.

Work days and times.   

We mark on a calendar more the special days and events.  Things that need to be highlighted to be remembered because they could slip through the cracks of regularity, of our unacknowledged schedule.

Some thoughts on gravity

This calendar is the most fundamental expression of what humanity has in common.  What life on earth has in common in fact.

We have days and nights and seasons.

We have our feet on the earth and our heads in the sky.

Our hearts and hands reach out to connect to each other and the earth.  To life itself.

This calendar presents the universe on a human scale.

Gravity in fact.  Gravity is our first teacher.  The first relationship we have out of the womb.

In the womb we float, contained, weightless.

When we enter the world we literally fall.

The only instinctive fear in humans is of falling.  The newborn reflexes of expansion and contraction, Moro reflex and whatever the other one is, are reactions to the experience of  lack of support.

So from the beginning, gravity is the enemy.

To be feared at an instinctive pre-verbal level.

And inescapable.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be an astronaut.  To escape gravity?

At the same time, gravity is our greatest ally.

Life without gravity is actually inconceivable.

The universe is made of gravity.

Stars shine because of gravity.

Planets orbit because of gravity.

 

Gravity creates ocean currents and weather systems.

Gravity makes rivers flow and rain fall.

The relationship with gravity informs plants which way is up.  Towards the light, which is created by gravity.

Is gravity god?

Gravity is certainly our first manifest experience of relationship.

We exist in gravity.  The rules dont bend.

We can look up at the stars or down at our feet to better understand our relationship with gravity.

We can fall down and break because of gravity.

We can reach our potential because we stand upright and work with gravity.

Fighting gravity is a losing game.  But we can work with it.

Then we experience that there is an uplift which balances the downpull.

That’s what our bones are for.

They need to be in gravity to develop to their potential.  To experience the force of gravity running through them on a regular basis.  At a cellular level. our bones respond to that and strengthen accordingly.

When we work with gravity, not only the earth, but the universe is on our side.

Inspiring stuff.

Dancers and movers know this in their bones and bodies.  Even when they fall they fall with gravity, not against it.  There is a lesson there for us all.

But what about the calendar?

We have gravity in common.

We have being on earth in common.

We have day and night in common, the earth spinning on its axis

We have orbiting the sun in common.

All this we can experience on a daily basis.

We see the same sun, the same moon.  We don’t see – we aren’t directly aligned with – all the syzygies, but we feel them at a body level.  We feel the gravity of the situation.

We share the solar seasons, the timeless flow of shifting daylight length through the solar orbit.

We share the change of bloom and dying of vegetation that follows the change of light.  The cycles of animal life that depend directly on the available food and warmth.

And now that humans have become significant players in the shift of energy around the planet, we share the consequences when the planet rebalances with planet scale impersonal efficiency.  Hot weather, cold weather, storms, drought, floods.

The planet throws weather around with the same abandon that humans throw money around.  With the same indifference to human – and animal and plant – suffering.

It’s all just energy right?

And it will stabilise in the end, one way or another, and the planet will win, because gravity always wins.  Comes out on top, lol.

So we, as individual humans, and collectively as humanity, can choose to work/play with gravity and the planet and the weather, or not.

Since the collective is made up of individuals, you can do your bit by remembering to play with gravity, with life, with the seasonal changes that are manifest around you every day.

Create with what has fallen, already sacrificed to time and gravity.  Allow it to blow away in the wind.  Or sink further into gravity with decay.

As will you, ultimately.

We are born, we rise, we fall and die.

There is only now.  enjoy this moment, this place this time, these people these things.

Celebrate everything. 

Life is a gift of gravity. 

 

Wow, sounds like some calendar.

Where can I get one?

Free download right here.  And then you go on the list to find out when an occasional print copy becomes available, among other things.

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