Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Yesterday, we took a 4-mile walk along River Road, bordering the Mystic River, and I think, for both of us, it was a relaxing walk. I don’t mean to suggest that we walked slowly, because we kept what was, for me, a speedy pace, but I did feel relaxed as I walked – sort of serene, I guess, or placid, or perhaps just plain loose. In fact, the Latin origin of ‘relaxed’ is ‘laxus’, meaning loose, so perhaps feeling relaxed means feeling so loose that you can easily spin around and over and through problems and worries. I felt like a wind as I walked, a light wind that simply swirls down the road with unflustered effervescence.
Can a road be said to be relaxed, just winding along beside a river in an easygoing way? 
Here’s a laid-back lady relaxing on stones that are happy to have her. 
And the sway of these riverside plants seemed poised and effortless..
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BEING FREE
There are times when I see, with surprising ease, that I’ve been given the gift of complete freedom. On those occasions, it becomes clear to me that, rather than being bound within a separate, isolated, vulnerable body, I am actually an essential part of a boundless and harmonious universe. Atoms that make up the mind and body I call mine were shaped at the same moment that stars started to shine and the earth to spin, and thus have sailed freely through countless eons. My thoughts, too, have flown to me on the freest wings, sailing into my life in casual, relaxed ways from who knows where, and I can take those thoughts beyond all boundaries, wherever I please. Most of the time, I confess, I do feel bound up by all kinds of limits, but at certain special times I know I’m as free as winds that flow from wherever to anywhere.
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“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” –Chinese Proverb
EVERYDAY MIRACLES: An Occasional Journal of a Life Lived in Wonder 