It was three years ago in July that I first learned how to find a four leaf clover. I was living halfway between Maine and Montana and back in Bozeman for a month: walking around town, spending time at the office or in the foothills, and wondering why I had driven my car and most of my belongings back east. Verklempt and confused almost all of the time. I loved it here and I loved it there and it was breaking my heart to attempt to love two places so deeply; less of a breaking I suppose more of an undoing. I was uprooting the life I made for myself in order to face the ghosts I had in hiding in closets at home. It was one of those fragile in between spaces in which Willow thinks to herself, ah. i feel so unstable. it must be a good time to take myself off my antidepressants and feel everything that is meant to be felt.
In this same moment that I was feeling all that was meant to be felt, which in this particular case meant spiraling into a mid summer depression, I happened to notice a four leaf clover that our summer intern Charlotte had pressed into the back of her clear phone case. I had never found one before and was desperate to make office small talk, so I asked about it. Most of what she said I no longer remember, and one thing has stuck with me. She said something along the lines of, to find a four leaf clover, all you need to do is tell yourself you are only looking for a four leaf clover. I gushed at how sage and lovely this was. I had an appetite to make meaning from anything that summer.
I think it was the next day, and the peak of my midsummer depressive episode. My feelings were beginning to overrun my ability to function as someone’s coworker who was 24 and going through it, or someone’s girlfriend living out of their suitcase in your apartment for a month. I didn’t know what I needed but I knew it wasn’t whatever had been happening in Bozeman, so I took myself on a drive up Hyalite canyon. I had my swimsuit on, my journal in a straw bag, and an Out of Office block on my work calendar. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, I had picked this respite becuase I knew it was a no cell service area, and I needed to detach from my reality for a moment. I found a spot to sit by the river and let myself have a little cry and a river baptism (really just a dunk, but it was fast and shallow and ice cold so it felt more like a baptism, especially given my mental state). My spot was mostly rocky, with some grassy areas nearby. I looked down at a patch of clovers, and with Charlotte’s words swirling in my meaning making space, willed myself to find one.
I didn’t just find one - I found multiple, and even one with five leaves. I think that made me cry more tears. It felt like a gift from whoever my god was and might still be. A sign that I was going to be alright.
Something changed for me that day. I found my first four leaf clover, and gained a little bit of conciousness: hope, and a sense that there was a larger natural-physical force to my life that knew much more about what I needed than my anxiety did. That day by the stream I slowed down enough to take myself out of the slog that is trying to be okay. I slowed down enough to take care of myself and let myself just be as I needed to be in that moment. I slowed down enough to sit and look and to find a four leaf clover - and if you’re looking for a trick, I think that’s it. You must need the gift from the universe, but you have to slow down to recieve it.
For as long as I can remember I have been in motion. As my mother says, my essense as a human has always had a bit of joie de vivre, or an exuberant enjoyment of life. With this joie de vivre comes an innate energy, kindness and zest: I love spontanuity as much as I love to plan and fill my days, I love to say yes, I love to make someone else feel important or happier than they were, I love living and doing and being in motion.
In this season of life, beginning the day I found my first four leaf clover and stretching into my current 27 and a half, I am realizing that the energy and zest that has gotten me so far can also mean that I speak before thinking, struggle with listening, tuck my feelings away and keep going, and say yes and yes and yes to so many things that I wonder if those were really my choices, or just made on behalf of making someone else feel important and happy. I feel this especially when I return to places I have lived and loved, and therefore have people to see and spots to frequent, namely right now Portland.
I have started keeping a list in my purse notebook of all the people who say to me next time you’re in Portland let me know! I’d love to see you! let’s grab coffee or a drink! and as I write in my little list book, wondering who or what I have capacity for on a given Saturday monring in Portland as a grad student running a small business navigating a medium distance relationship, I wonder if all this joie de vivre is a blessing or a curse. There are so many lovely people to meet and to visit with, so many new places to explore and so many things to do. My time feels fleeting and precious, and through acknowedging that I find it hard to choose rest when there is so much possibility and potential in each moment, I am trying to be more measured, more steady. I can feel the kindness and energy that I have given to the world start to wear on my body, sensing the effects of years of saying yes, of not stopping, built up as a tension in my breathing, in my stomach, and in my pelvic floor. I am experiencing the reprecussions of not knowing rest, not knowing no, not knowing slow, of not knowing how to stop filling every crevice of my time.
This year’s spring energy has brought me zest while also encouraging me to slow down a bit. I don’t think I’m alone in this moment of realizing that becoming more slow, more measured, more protective of one’s space and time is perhaps the point. My sources tell me that ‘slow livng’ ‘slow-maxing’ is on everyone’s minds this season. Maybe it’s the pace of the world around us, the influx of the news and AI and consumption and being in your twenties admidst it all. But there seems to be a general desire to sink into the moments of reprieve, to give up the draining social account, to practice saying no. Do you feel this too?
As spring turns to summer in Maine, a season widely acknowledged to bring a faster pace of life and a full calendar, finding ways to slow down have become somewhat of a pastime and a challenge. Although I’m most likely to be found slowing down in a clover patch, I’m gaining conciousness in other ways too. I’m playing soduku. I’m clearing out the freezer. I’m going on walks and runs and bike rides for the sole purpose of being on my own two feet as a mode to getting around. I’m starting to ask myself where the heck do I think I’ve been going? And in what rush? Why do I feel the need to do it all? What is the benefit of saying yes? Of making sure everyone likes me? There have been moments in my past few years of starting to ask these questions, of gaining slight consciousness, that usually coincides with taking myself off my SSRI or injuring my knee or giving into a day that feels like there is no other option for you but to take a second.
It’s also in this season of my life, at 27 and a half and regaining some consciousness, that I have re-developed an affinity for looking for four leaf clovers, and thanks to Charlotte, have cultivated a niche for being able to find them. I can sit in a patch of clovers for an hour, mindfully combing through the leaves.
I find solace knowing that I can relish in the joy of being outside on a sunny day, and that when a rainy day comes I can appreciate it for what it is, too. The rhthyms of life are like this, but instead of wishing to be in anywhere that is not here, and now, bumping and jolting from event to event, I am trying to settle into a more even-keeled pace. I am manifesting and envisioning my summer to be one powerful but steady wave. I breathe in, I’m doing, I breathe out, I’m finding rest in the moments.
And I think that’s what four leaf clovers have started to mean to me. In order to recieve a gift, to find a slower more sustainable pace of life, you have to sit with it. You have to get off your phone, get closer to the ground, block off an hour in your Google calendar to just be with where you are. You have clear about what it is that you want, and you have to let it come to you (if it’s meant to). You have to slow down.
How to find a four leaf clover:
Step 1. Sit with the desire to find a four leaf clover. Perhaps literally sit down, on the ground. What will it bring you? Why are you searching? (perhaps this step is enough)
Step 2. Tell the universe what you’re after, i.e. I’m only looking for clovers with four leaves.
Step 3. Practice patience. It will come to you if it’s meant to. And if it’s not coming, repeat steps 1-3 until you either a) find a four leaf clover or b) gain a level of mindfulness that you did not have prior to sitting with and looking for.
p.s. This mindbox guide came into my life on a rainy day in late May during the time I started to draft this, confirming my inclication that I am not alone in this self study, and helping to cultivate the difference in slow living as an aesthetic vs. a mindset.
p.p.s. a note that came across my Substack feed that I liked:
Best advice I received:
If you overthink, Write.
If you underthink, Read.
and that is all.
