What do you do when you
hit one of those days where you question why you’re here, if you are making any
difference in the world, and feel that your work is a bunch of crap?
I
rarely have those days, but I did yesterday.
I
had nothing to say for my blog, even sitting in front of the computer drove me
nuts. And then I dipped into twitter and saw a beautiful girl riding bareback
on a gorgeous horse.
I felt
uplifted until I saw that shortly below the picture
Lady Gaga was rushing home because her horse, Arabella--the one in the picture--was
dying.
Well,
crumb.
A
few pictures below, that beautiful girl was crying her eyes out with a
broken heart.
I
got out of twitter and decided
to get out of the house too.
Luckily,
that day, I had that opportunity as I don’t always have a vehicle and I care
for my grandson. But as luck would have it, my daughter was home and I could
take off for tall timber. Hey, I had my faithful
pickup—my office on wheels.
We’ve
had rains recently and they have turned the fields into green lakes so
exquisitely brilliant it brings tears to your eyes. And driving through
emerald fields of green, I saw that lady luck was smiling on me.
A white horse galloped across a field.
The
lead fell from my heart. And then across the road, I saw why the white horse
was so excited. Two horses, with two riders, were ambling along through one of
those fields.
To further cheer
me up, later on, I stopped in my tracks and watched three squirrels playing tag
in the middle of the road. There were no
cars except for mine, so the squirrels were safe and they quickly scampered
away to safety.
Guess
I was scampering away to safety too. And I found a place to heal from my
insecurities. Green fields, three horses, three playing squirrels.
When
animals play, they play full out.
Sometimes
we forget to do that.
By
evening, I had read Martha Beck’s account of
an experience during surgery. I would call it an out-of-body-experience, some might say it was an anesthesia-induced
hallucination, but no, it was, for her, a spiritual awakening
no matter what you call it.
It left her with a love, a calmness
she had never before experienced. And her conclusion got to me. Rather than
have one mountain-top experience, (she didn’t use that term) she concluded that
that was the way we were meant to live all the time.
I wondered, however, about the
following quote, and wondered who had said it, and found that I did. I had
written it on a site that has languished unpublished for years. Had I read that
quote someplace else? I don’t know.
If we expect perfection we are in for a rude awakening. And if
we expect that failure will never touch us, that is to say, we have never taken
risks, learned from failure, survived a set-back or given the opportunity to
forge ahead in the face of adversary.
And so I read that site and received its pep-talk.
On the off-chance that someone else will benefit from it as I
did, I hit the “Publish” button.
Live long, and wish on a white horse every chance you get.
I love you,
Joyce