Blah Blah Blah

My second writing piece from the weekend. This one was also kind of fun. :^)

an advance p.s.: I can't get my fonts larger and I don't like this layout. 

I’ve given up.

You know those people on Facebook who poss a dozen nuggets of inspiration at at time? I read them with an upturned eye.  Might as well unfriend me because I not only won’t benefit from your effort to show me the path to a happy life; I will growl at you. There is no sound on Facebook proper and for that reason I am glad you take no offense. 

Just today: 

When the world says ‘give up, hope whispers ‘try it one more time.

Not every day is a perfect day, but every day is a miracle.

You get there by realizing you are already there. 

and today, my personal least favorite: 

Don’t be afraid to rock the boat. If someone falls out they weren’t meant to be in your boat.

Today I am saved only by one true nugget:

You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.

I have not earned the right to be righteous. A time ago I too looked to affirmations for comfort and clarity. I too shared them with others, although as an aside, six in a row one after another is a bit much, don’t you think so too? But I yearned for a vessel to float my confusion and who wouldn’t welcome the simple compass of assurance? 

How many meditations, ashrams, workshops, silent breakfasts, prayer chains, tarot cards, solstice gatherings, yoga poses, goddess channeling, dragon slayings, and floatation tanks have I experienced? Ask me. 

Many. Enough. I am an optimist who looks at the world with eager hope and willing hands. I have seen plenty, felt plenty, wandered plenty. 

Look at me and you will see a woman who luck has coveted. I have everything I’ve aspired to. I am healthy, I have roots, I am loved, I have a bank account. I am smart and wise and I know my way. 

It must be my age. I still think hope floats and hearts bounce.  But I see that the landscape ahead requires different provisions. 

“A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.” 

That observation is not mine. I told you I don’t have the right to be righteous. That observation belongs to Colette, born in 1873, the same Colette who also said “On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds: One of them tempts us, ah! what a dream, to live in that. The other stifles us at the first breath.”

I am not beneath offering up my own affirmations when the time is right. Though I would never roll out six at a time. 

My point is this: sometimes life is easy and sometimes life is hard. there is no way around that. The simple easy is often common: planting a garden, kissing little toes, reading Hemingway on the couch. Complicated easy is still easy but maybe risky too: being swallowed by passion, the long awaited trip to Africa, the job that delivers but also demands.

And simple hard: staying in shape, honoring fences, steadying when the wind blows.

But complicated hard: that is when the road to enlightenment misleads. I tell you what you already know: there is no redemption in wrestling grief, in watching Syria on the nightly news, in finding a lump, in watching your father die. Hard is hard and sometimes that’s what the world is and what your life is and all the affirmations in the world can’t change the fact that sometimes you just have to get through hard as best you can.

If you’re lucky, there is consolation. The sun has never refused to rise again, sooner or later.  

Ah! The sun also rises. Should I put that on Facebook? Now what I would I hope for if I did that? 

Love

kj