Sometimes I manage to do everything except what I am “supposed” to do. Thus I opened the window to begin typing tonight’s blog then found all kinds of things to do elsewhere on my computer. I’ve deleted email messages (now down to only 900 in my inbox), checked my bank balance, watched the eagles in their nest, checked Facebook a few times, etc. I’ve had thoughts and ideas rattling around in my head for tonight’s focus on things gratitude, but haven’t had the wherewithal to get around to actually starting to write. Okay, until now.
It’s not that I don’t have things to be grateful for, I do, as usual. They are for the most part simple, mundane things. I am grateful this evening for shifts in perspective that come suddenly and unexpectedly. I’ve had an odd sort of day–been a bit out of sorts, cranky, sad. I know that there’ll be days like this (Mama said so), so I try not to be too hard on myself when they hit. But I also had moments of smiles and almost laughter as I read funny things in an article or enjoyed a particularly humorous passage in the audiobook I’m listening to. I had brief, passing moments of clarity about a thorny issue I was tossing around in my head earlier and have experienced moments of creativity over the course of the day. I am grateful for all these things, these microcosms of life.
I continue to be in thought about how to discover for myself what I want to do and how what I want to do aligns with my purpose for being on the planet. I am trying not to focus on it so I don’t scare it away. It’s kind of like wanting to attract a shy animal to you; you sort of ignore it, don’t make direct eye contact, but settle yourself in a non-threatening posture and let it come to you. I am speaking to myself in a low, gentle voice, hoping to coax some insights from my oh-so-shy inner self. I’ve been told she has the answers, so I’m going to keep at her, kind of like the horse whisperer trying to reassure a skittish filly. It’s interesting to thing about oneself in those terms–to be at any given time both the whisperer and the filly, the reassurer and the reassured. Examined in that light I suppose it could be said that we have within ourselves everything we need, including the spark of Divine essence that permeates everything.
I am grateful to be alive. Life is beautifully complex and is full of such amazing variety and richness of textures, sights, sounds, experiences. Comedy, tragedy, failure, serendipity…so much can happen in a single day as well as span an entire lifetime. Yep, I’ve experienced multiple changes in perspective over the past few hours of this single day. Simply amazing. I wish I could convey more clearly what I am thinking and feeling about all this, but alas I am just barely grasping it myself and can’t articulate it very well. It puts me in mind of the question that Mary Oliver asks at the end of her poem The Summer Day, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
