Just this past week I had an incident. A minor incident, but an incident none the less. It started when I opened the back door of my van (the one I use for art exhibitions) to find that a lot of the contents had shifted. Since it was a beautiful day, I decided that I was going to rearrange and organize the back of my van. As my 7 year old son was shouting to me to come to play football with him, I then opened the van doors and told him to wait a few minutes while I work on my van.
For those of you who are not familiar with my “traveling to art shows lifestyle,” a lot of elements are incorporated into setting up a display. Large tent, heavy walls and weights. Yes, weights. My four weights are solid steel bars that are about 3 feet in length. They weigh 60 lbs each. As I opened the back of the van door, I saw that my weights had shifted down and were not in a very ideal place in my van. As I began to move two of the weights, one slid about 3 feet out of the van and onto my right foot.
As blood started coming out of the top of my shoe, I realized that I had done some damage. After a trip to the ER I found that I luckily I did not break any bones. I am currently icing, elevating and limping at best.
So… what does this mean to me? I took it as a sign from the Universe to SLOW DOWN. Because I am now caring for my swollen and bruised foot, I am forced to slow down. Just as I always speak about living in the moment… I am now at a point where I have to. And, to be quite honest, I am okay with that.
In normal day to day, (as we all are) rushing from one thing to the next. Because I can’t walk well, I can only accomplish a few things during the day. I am realizing, that if it doesn’t get done…then so be it.
How can you slow down? Taking time to care for yourself? Not taking for grated the simple pleasures…such as walking, jumping, running?
Don’t get me wrong, I am hoping that I will be back to normal within a short amount of time. However, when that time comes, I really want to stay in my way of taking things literally one step at a time.