undulations

I have a Michael  Leunig picture stuck to my fridge door, just to remind me that this is the way it is: One day I am basking in hill top blessedness, the next day I am plunged into the valley of despair. And to remind me that maybe this does not make me bi-polar or in need of medication...maybe I am just sensitive and alive and me, riding the waves of constant change?

One minute - and it can be a perfectly mundane minute, putting out the rubbish bins at twilight, or eating pizza on the verandah with two twelve year old boys -  I am filled with gratitude for this lovely life. Gratitude for the sweet breeze rustling in the palm fronds, for the two eagles circling high above the blue escarpment, for the strawberries from the market that we share after the pizza.

Then the next minute, or day, or week, I realise that actually my life is a pathetic mess of  futility and delusion. I trudge through a grey internal landscape where misery plays her sad violins in graveyards in the rain - And all while external circumstances are just as the same as they were the day before. Some little word or thought or interaction has triggered the gloom-response. Or perhaps some mysterious chemical, astological or climatic variable. 

Often all it takes for everything to lighten up again is a conversation with a friend,  a laugh about the whole tragi-comedy, the way we take ourselves and our lives too seriously.

I have this  postcard on my desk 

And I have a home page that every time I go on line says wise Zen things like 

Once you 

realise that the 

road is the goal

and that you

are always on

the road, not to

reach a goal, but to enjoy its

beauty and its

wisdom, life

ceases to be a

task and

becomes

natural and

simple, in itself

an ecstasy

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

...and still sometimes there are days when it’s All too Hard! Just remember that everything passes.