One day to the next

Weather changing

Sometimes varying enormously

Emotions

Veering from bright

To gloomy

A flurry of worry setting in

One day to the next

Can feel like travelling a lifetime away

Only to return

To a different array of feelings

thoughts

No two moments are the same

And neither am I

We think we are a solid form

But everything is changing

Cells dying, rearranging

And in one moment

Between this breath and that

…

*a woman walks on a city street seconds later she dies, pinned to a wall by an out of control bus. I passed the tribute in flowers left in her wake whilst in the city on the week-end.

Humans, we can be temporarily shocked out of our complacency that life is a given, from one moment to the next but then,

Complacency returns.

This life is too precious, too volatile, to let it pass without our absolute presence. Yet I see so many people on their phones, even while walking. The distraction of the blank stare, someone lost in thought, is just as dangerous.

Opportunity is presented to us in this moment, we miss it because we are somewhere else. I have learned a lesson this morning. I hope that’s all it is, a lesson. But now I have to bridge the gap until I can be certain, that awful unsettled feeling – where I can be once again – caught up in my own head and not present because I’m worried about something else that isn’t even real.

Or I can instead

Vow to be here now, here then, and here every step between here and then – which is all the present is.

Which is hard, really hard. And the more anxious I am, the more my brain calls me to sit inside the whirlpool of thoughts and emotions caused by thoughts – in unreality in other words.

Life is difficult

The first words of one of my favourite books, “The Road Less Travelled”

Life is difficult.

In Buddhism, it is the first of the Four Noble Truths.

Life is difficult

It is something I remind myself of when I’m anxious and can’t do anything about whatever it is I’m anxious about.

I don’t know why acceptance helps, it seems so defeated, but the truth cannot be argued with and simply is.

Life is difficult.

And the the only thing to do is accept it.

At least this way, we save all that energy that would be plunges into resistance and worry for being present instead.

Life is difficult.

But it’s also a privilege. And one we shouldn’t take for granted.