(Good) Morning

Do you see life as one stream of light interspersed with nights of dark or as one stream of darkness interspersed with days of light?  Though there will never be an answer, what we believe about the nature of life matters – Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening

I awoke this morning with a case of the case of the blues.  That is not totally uncommon … I have a dark side and it is fond of sneaking out as I sleep.   This one was a little darker than usual.  I could feel the first chill breezes of a spiritual winter.   It doesn’t matter that nothing has changed since yesterday morning when I awoke, as my Mom used to say, Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed.  It doesn’t matter that the gratitude list I wrote yesterday morning is just as valid today as it was then and that before the morning is over, I’ll write it again.

I have a good friend, who, if asked how he’s doing, will often answer, I’m livin’ the dream, Bud.  Sometimes, there’s a twinkle in his eye that tells me things aren’t exactly the dream he had in mind, but he’s saying it anyway.   If you knew my friend’s situation as well as I do, you might think he’s delusional or practicing the form of pretending to be happy known as Acting As If.  You know: if you Act As If you are happy long enough, you will be … to my view, a questionable premise.  It is my experience that ignoring the darker emotions inhibits our ability to fully experience happiness and it’s sublime cousin, joy.  No, I think my friend knows what poet and philosopher, Mark Nepo, knows, that what we believe about the nature of life matters.

There may be naturally glass-is-half-full people.  Maybe.  But for many of us, Older Eyes included, it takes work.   It takes sitting down with pen … or keyboard … in hand and drawing my attention back to the good things in my life until the half-empty glass is half-full.  And I’ll be damned if sometimes it isn’t fuller than that.

Have a half-full-glass (at least) Sunday.

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Tags: feeling older, gratitude, Life, mindfulness, psychology, spirituality

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