A lot of times when I start to feel overwhelmed, I’ll have this urge to lie on the ground.

In the last several months of my last full-time job, I probably hit the carpet weekly. Just for a few minutes, while I regained a sense of hope.

One Saturday during that difficult season, I was feeling particularly down. That was one of the darkest days I’ve known. I made it outside to the grass and fell to the earth.

Eventually my breathing slowed and deepened. I stopped crying. I watched the clouds overhead and clutched the grass below.

It was like I could hear the heartbeat of the earth, like I was being rocked and held.

I think there’s something to this innate instinct to stop fighting against gravity, to be held by something solid, to be grounded once more.

Two of my most darling friends came over that night and lay in the grass with me. If being grounded was what I needed most, that friendship is what I needed second most in the world.

Here’s something I free-wrote later given the prompt, “What matters?”:

What matters?

Guts. I don’t mean to gross you out. I’m not talking about intestines spilling out of a split-open body, although you need those. Nor am I talking about courage—though that does matter, too. I’m talking about instincts—gut reactions—first thoughts.

Your guts matter. Trust your instinct. Trust that feeling that resides there, deep in your bowels.
It isn’t your head.
It isn’t your heart.
It’s something more primal.
It’s the core of your very being reacting with the knowledge of all the universe—it’s all plugged in here.

And you don’t listen.
You react. You trust. You move.
Wax on. Wax off. Muscle memory. Encoded to your guts.
Feel. Know. Respond.
In a split second.

What else matters?

Writing matters.
I think it might be able to change the world.
Of course, I could be putting too much stake in it.
But this is it. Wild Mind.
Pen connected to gut.
Think.Write.
The pen can hardly keep up.
This is the pulse of the earth.
The earth is made up of me.
I am made up of it.
It moves. I respond.
At least, that’s how it should be.
I should be able to nurture words free-flowing out of me.
Maybe that will come back
when the leak in the system
is fixed
and my creativity
isn’t oozing out the back
down a blackened alley gutter
that smells of rotten potatoes
and fecal matter.

What matters is
friends who come over and
lie in the grass with you,
rooting your guts to the earth
once more,
staring up at clouds rolling by
and at stars starting to peek out.
Crickets chirp. Lives move forward
blindly.
And we lie here
in the grass
drinking wine
and smoking cloves.
And a caterpillar gets smashed
when he tries to hitch a ride.
His watermelon-green guts
splash out on the counter.
Poor guy can’t live anymore.
Guts matter.