Choices

While the winds howl, and the light comes into the day, the air shifts. The temperature is 55 degrees fahrenheit - ten degrees warmer than yesterday. Today is Thursday.

Even though stories that come across my awareness about world affairs continue to be sad, today there is space for a little brightness. The part of our collective story that focuses on the losses and the failure to see one another is met with the part of our story that moves hearts and hands into service and kindness. There is that aspect of who we are that continues, no matter how grim things may be.

Reminders of the durability and resilience of human beings can be found in many places, including among the plant life, the trees, the heavens that bring light, no matter what race, religion, gender, nation-state to which a person may belong. There are invitations to learn, and gestures of kindness that exist right along side the conditions that suggest a refusal to recognize our deep and inextricable connection to one another. These are abundant, yet sometimes very subtle openings that allow one to see hope.

Where there is a pathway to change is where a person decides to make a choice that can change lives. Not just the lives of others, but to remember that in choosing, one is on the path to changing their own life. It cannot be avoided - the choosing has its own effect, whether a person realizes this or not. One can choose to be open, to be vigilant about every opportunity to show consideration, care for others and in doing so - there is a caring for self. The beauty of this way of living is that no matter what the effect, one can experience the positive energy that comes from the intention and gesture that emerges.

Some will find it hard to understand. There is a need for such people to have explanations for everything - specificity, examples, material evidence before understanding is possible for such a person. This is a lot of energy output for those who can explain, provide examples, and direct attention to material results. The teachers who can fufill this role have to be appreciated so much more than they are today because they are choosing to "wait" for those who need this kind of help in order to have a chance to realize something invaluable.

There are plenty of texts and resources that have been put into our world - all trying to explain what it means - life. And the funny thing is, that the more one reads about the meaning of life and living, the more one can end up doing a search that goes around and around in circles. One has to live. One has to see with more than the eyes. One needs to allow the natural feeling of deep gratitude for the things that present the opportunity for a choice to be made. To choose to see beauty, life/death as part of the exercise of living, and to do so even as things are falling apart.