This morning it is raining again

The sea is whipped into frenzied foaming white capped horses that beat at the shore and trample everything in their path

To enter the ocean is like walking into a stampede, and who would do that?

Not me, I wander along the high ground looking out

Relishing the soft cool drizzle that moistens my cheeks, the wild salty wind, and the sheer joy of being alive in all of this

It is a different kind of day at the beach

That is all

Yet I hear the laments for the lack of sun, the desire for a swim, another day ruined again. This precious time passing without the indulgences usually set aside for holidays

Such heavy burdens to carry are our whims

How often do our expectations build their lofty staircases into the sky?

Only to fall flat when they don’t come off

Leaving us tumbling down – languishing on the rocks, emotionally at least – moods turning black as we admit defeat

Things didn’t work out – just the way we wanted

And the time and energy that is misspent on staring at where we never quite went, or perceive we did not receive

Is enormous

A wasted life is surely, one whose energy is spent in running into locked doors that were never intended for us

Tumbling down the non existent stairwells of figments of our imagination

Caught up in the dreams of a brain born world that could never match up to the reality of an unbridled mind – one that is unfettered by expectation and lives entirely in looking at the miracle around us and seeing it clearly

Instead, far too often we are lost in wishes, built by imagined gain , lingering in yesterdays that will never come again

Or futures that lack grounding and reason

Far better to accept what is, every second of the day and don’t waste our miracles

On the futility of choosing again and again

The pain of disturbed expectations

and days already past into the endless fermentation of a universe alive, and consuming every second

*The very fact that we are alive at this moment, is a miracle. What if your parents never met? Or what if they did but then could not conceive children – it happens.

Every day a million different outcomes threaten your existence. It could be you diagnosed with cancer or illness. It could be you in the airplane that crashed, it could be you who stumbled off a cliff or that tree fell on in the middle of a storm. Literally millions of terrible things that could occur and yet here we stand looking out over a stormy sea that is apparently wrecking plans for a swim.

Oh the disaster! The thing is, I have a brilliant imagination and broad capacity for wishful thinking. But I have also felt the emotional toll of being takin high by an expectation and then plummeting to earth on the reality of what has arrived.

There is only one solution for a joyful life and that is to seek your pleasure in whatever arises. To see the gold in even the darkest moment, and that gold is always present, always available when we realise, just being alive is a miracle.

So don’t waste your miracle on pain.

“There are two ways to live your life, one is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is”

Albert Einstein

Image courtesy of Mohamed Nohassi

“Don’t let your miracle be wasted on your pain” comes from the Netflix show “Manifest” where some of the characters are given a second chance at life. But we don’t need a second chance at life when we understand right now, what a miracle life is.