There are days when tasks seem unsurmountable and the workload endless, when sleeping feels like sinning considering the deadlines that have to be met and papers to be written.
When taking a break feels like letting people down, and when thinking about resting feels like abandoning work that is yet to be started.
When caffeine becomes a life source.
When stopping feels like quitting.
When exhaustion becomes exultation.
On those days, remind yourself to breathe. Keep the air in your lungs and tell yourself to count, slower and slower each time, until your heart remembers that its duty is to keep you alive.
Remind yourself to stay still. Allow the movement around you to remind you of life, knowing perfectly well that stillness means living as well. Trees, too, are alive.
And yet they are not fazed by the strong winds.
Feel the wind brush against the top of your head, your baby hairs bristling in the silent breeze; feel the wind slide its way down to your forehead, tickling the tip of your nose into prominence — soon enough you will smell the wind approaching before it perches itself on your nose.
Feel the wind slide farther down, into the wedge above your mouth, ghosting your lips, planting kisses, murmuring unspoken secrets.
Feel the wind splash its way onto your shoulders, playing with the ridges on your back, toying with the hair on your nape. Feel your muscles soften, the wind a reminder to take this moment.
Right now.
To breathe.
Feel the wind toy with your fingers, and notice how your fingers unintentionally curl, as though grasping the wind and then subsequently letting it pass. Your fingers understand that not all things have to be within reach. And that, as with all things, is not a diminution of your strength.
Sometimes, you need to let go of things that will serve their purpose better elsewhere.
Feel the wind caress your chest, your legs. Feel it tickle your knee caps and remember when you used to use your knee caps as the shields of your childhood. When your knees would be the first to hit the ground as you ran and tripped (as all children do) under the afternoon sun, when your knees would be the first to get scraped when you slide to the ground, when your knees would be the first thing you offered your mother, bloodied and scarred, and cried as you clutched her hand, though silently knowing her touch would make it better.
Feel the wind play with your calves, silently finding folly in your ankles.
Feel the wind touch your toes, tickling the pads of your feet.
And then,
When you are tired,
Or wishing to quit,
Or desirous of a break,
Remember this again.
Of perpetual finds 