I've been noting lately how much I seem to believe that if I can BLAME a certain entity for what I view as an "unfairness," then my life will somehow be better. But it goes beyond blame and on to punishment. I wanted the person who unfairly fired my husband from his job of 26 years, where he excelled, to suffer.
And what good, really, does any of that do? It is all merely my desperate clenching to a view of reality (that things should be fair [i.e., the good rewarded/the bad punished], and if they are, then I can be happier because [surely] the world is a much better place to be) that is rather black and white and assumes that a world with no suffering is somehow "better."
Yet I can acknowledge that suffering, that "bad things," (in contrast to the "good") can enhance our appreciation for the good. Long days of dreary fog and cold days suddenly punctuated by clear blue skies and mild temperatures certainly cast us outside, looking up and singing praises.
A tendency to such easy categorization may be a trait of the Gatherer in me, the one who loves to pick blackberries, bring them home, and cook up a sticky cobbler. As the many photos and words in this blog attest, I love sifting and sorting through pebbles for agates. Finding the wheat among the chaff----makes one feel, well, "special." I (and no one else) found this!
I do believe that each of us is special and unique, just as I also believe that we are all the same, and it is my simultaneous beliefs in opposites, my propensity to live in paradox, that has caused me to feel rather uncomfortable much of the time, as if something is wrong with me ("Get off that damn fence," I'm told, again and again). This tendency to think that something is wrong causes me to feel depressed. . .
Clenching these ideas to me with their comfortable patterns of familiarity ("comfortable" is good, isn't it?!; "depression" is bad, right?!!) reminds me that I keep THINKING that through my careful reasoning I will somehow come to The Answer (the One that will settle it all!). Hah!
Yet my experience tells me that answerS tend to come from surprising elsewheres, and that I must let go of my desire for blame and punishment and focus instead on my own part in this new reality: I wanted a new life with my husband; I hated his old job as much as he'd come to hate it.
Oh, my. My poor little brain sure likes to spin round and round in those old trenches. But the sun is shining out there, too.
And what good, really, does any of that do? It is all merely my desperate clenching to a view of reality (that things should be fair [i.e., the good rewarded/the bad punished], and if they are, then I can be happier because [surely] the world is a much better place to be) that is rather black and white and assumes that a world with no suffering is somehow "better."
Yet I can acknowledge that suffering, that "bad things," (in contrast to the "good") can enhance our appreciation for the good. Long days of dreary fog and cold days suddenly punctuated by clear blue skies and mild temperatures certainly cast us outside, looking up and singing praises.
A tendency to such easy categorization may be a trait of the Gatherer in me, the one who loves to pick blackberries, bring them home, and cook up a sticky cobbler. As the many photos and words in this blog attest, I love sifting and sorting through pebbles for agates. Finding the wheat among the chaff----makes one feel, well, "special." I (and no one else) found this!
I do believe that each of us is special and unique, just as I also believe that we are all the same, and it is my simultaneous beliefs in opposites, my propensity to live in paradox, that has caused me to feel rather uncomfortable much of the time, as if something is wrong with me ("Get off that damn fence," I'm told, again and again). This tendency to think that something is wrong causes me to feel depressed. . .
Clenching these ideas to me with their comfortable patterns of familiarity ("comfortable" is good, isn't it?!; "depression" is bad, right?!!) reminds me that I keep THINKING that through my careful reasoning I will somehow come to The Answer (the One that will settle it all!). Hah!
Yet my experience tells me that answerS tend to come from surprising elsewheres, and that I must let go of my desire for blame and punishment and focus instead on my own part in this new reality: I wanted a new life with my husband; I hated his old job as much as he'd come to hate it.
Oh, my. My poor little brain sure likes to spin round and round in those old trenches. But the sun is shining out there, too.
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| Jon holds a perfect honey crisp apple plucked from our tree (note his guitar-string calluses) |
