Discouragement is easy: we enjoy the moment when others express their care, when they notice you as a real person, when the sun shines especially brightly on the path you're on, and then. . . suddenly. . . clouds form in grey heaps in the sky, you can't see the path clearly anymore, and you begin to wonder. . .
Are these merely more words added to the great Web, sticking like so many insects caught haphazardly in their innocent flights, waiting for that big spider to suck them dry? Would you write them if no one read them?
For a while I would. But it is true that I like to think of being of some service and wonder whether this writing might be that means of giving back. But for now, writing here is my attempt to understand what I'm doing, how I'm changing, how to become more REAL, and it is my hope that someone else benefits, too.
And so, for the first day of spring, I walked our little street here up and down with my neighbor Sharon (who's only a couple of years younger than my mother, yet unlike my mother is wonderfully interesting and interested in living and giving), each of us dragging beside us our large garbage bag like some reverse-Santas, picking up every bit of trash and cigarette butt along the way. I told her I was happy she encouraged me to do this with her because I'd likely not have done it on my own. She said she's done it alone before and would again.
I remember the wise saying that we do not always know whom we benefit and how, yet it is important to continue, regardless, as if we did.
