This has been a tough couple of weeks for me health-wise. And it’s not clear to me when or if it will resolve. There are many unknowns and perhaps much that is ultimately unknowable. A part of me wants to figure it all out, and fix it. But perhaps the only real fix is to learn to live a full life within the constraints of my physical body in each moment.
So today I am working on
Planting the Seeds for Joy
in my life just as it is.
How do I do that? My first choice today was to let go of searching for answers and to simply let myself feel the sadness that was behind the search—simply allowing myself to feel what I feel without judgment.
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.”
― Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
Next I put on some cello music. I love music of all kinds, but cello music touches my soul and moves me like no other music moves me. Ahhh…
Sitting here listening to this music I find there is little else to do. Instead it’s more a matter of being here in this moment without desiring anything to be different.
Finally I took a trip back in time (through looking at photographs I made) to a day I spent in the Boundary Waters in May of 2017. It had always been my dream to take a trip in the Boundary Waters but pain issues kept me from taking the kind of camping and canoeing trip I dreamed of. While I was spending time near Ely in spring 2017 I contacted Peta Barrett at Women’s Wilderness Discovery and talked to her about what I might be able to do. She took me on a one-day canoe outing in Lake One of the Boundary Waters.
Even with Peta doing most of the paddling so that I could make photographs, the day in the canoe was very challenging physically. But oh, what beauty and wildness I saw and experienced in that short day! It truly was a dream come true.
We cannot always have or do the things we most desire. But we can learn to desire the things we do have and can do. It’s called
Loving What Is
So my prayer for today and always is to learn how to love what is fully, be grateful for all of the privileges of my life (too many to count), and see beauty in my surroundings wherever and however I am.
I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”
― Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
Wishing you a beautiful weekend and some time planting the seeds for joy in your own life.
May you walk in beauty.
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