Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Drinking In Sunlight



I like spring sunsets out West.  As the sun sinks slowly into the horizon, for a time the sky is white hot, like liquid light almost.  The rays etch everything in a white golden light.  You would think an absence of color would not be very pretty but the details become so crisp and clear.  The leaves on the trees seem painted in sharp strokes, thin lines, beautiful dark contrasting with fiery light.  It really is breath-taking.  It reminds me, as everything seems to lately, that beauty is a matter of perspective, mind-set, frame of reference and so much more.  It can be so very complicated trying to understand how it’s rare, so rare for two people to take in the same view and see it differently.  One may see magic and beauty beyond description and one may just see blinding light requiring sun glasses to cut down the glare.  I’m standing outside barefoot in the grass, closing my eyes and watching the colors play behind my eyelids…hot pink, magenta, indigo blue and I open my eyes and the blinding beauty of the setting sun returns.
It’s been a good day.  A long one and I’m tired but it was beautiful.  I’m reminded in this moment of desires and constraints…when you want something so much and yet there seems to be miles of distance and too much time between you and the object of your desire.  It’s not an easy place to be but then a very dear soul to me told me just recently that things happen on God’s time and not ours.  The thought can really tend to make you relax a bit if you trust it.  I do…as uncomfortable as it sometimes seems.  I think I can only because I know first-hand that everything in life happens in its own time, in it’s own season and for very good reason and well, who am I to question?  I can always set my intent, hope, pray and imagine the best, sweet victory and the tragedy of waiting will one day seem like nothing.  Sometimes I think that your attitude counts for more than experience in life.  You can have all the experience in the world but if you have a crappy attitude, everything you do means nothing to you but grief and pain.  Why would you do that to yourself, I often think.  It just doesn’t make much sense.  Maybe some people see no point in searching for silver linings.  I do. I’ve walked on the dark side.  I’ve seen pain, tragedy and gut wrenching depression and I remember the thoughts that precipitated those feelings and I remember the negative outlook that brought me to my knees.  It wasn’t life bringing me unlucky tidings.  It was me and my negative thoughts that made me fall…and fall, and fall.
Never again!  I’ve seen the light…literally speaking and when the dark days dawn, as they often do, I’m not afraid and I smile even when walking underneath the darkest storm clouds.  I’ve got something life cannot take from me…my reason to smile.  It comes from inside and it’s like a little game I play with me sometimes.  When the world gets really tough and seeming to spin wildly on it’s axis, I laugh at the anxiety and fear.  They are really funny things.  They cannot live where I will not let them.  I feel them like everyone else does, but I really do take the time to think it through and then  I just decide to choose differently for no other reason than I can.  There was a time I didn’t know I had a choice.  But, now that I know, there is no turning back.  My world is amazing not because I’m lucky or blessed.  What makes me blessed and lucky is my ability to choose to see things differently.  I don’t need sunglasses to dim this glorious light I’m so very alive to witness this day.  I wish only to drink it in because it makes me smile.  Well, and I also wish that others might find their way to this place I’m in right now.  I didn’t have to go far to get there…I just had to go inside my own mind long enough to dispel negative thoughts with positive ones.  I’ll tell you, even when it rains, I’ve got sunshine inside.  Even when I get down or bad things happen, I just move through the pain of it and let it fall away choosing to see the wisdom in a situation, the life lesson and I smile knowing “this too shall pass.”  And…it does, it always does.
I hope you enjoy the sunlight where ever you are.  Smile and be happy just because you can!  Many blessings to you and yours!

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