Tuesday should be recognized officially as a second chance at Monday, because I will not hesitate to tell you I had one hell of a Monday. A day of dominoes, where one off kilter event triggered another, then another, then another. To the point that by 3 PM my give a damn was broke, and I raided the liquor shelf in the hallway. A shelf so seldom utilized that I had to take a damp cloth and clean the necks and caps of bottles before I could mix a drink.
So what does Ellen do when she has had a shitty day?
I woke up this morning (granted, it being a day off from work helps) and resolved that today will be truly a new, better, different kind of day. A bit of contemplation and reflection is in order, and that will occur throughout the day.
Beautiful thing about life. We can constantly, and with either broad gestures or minute adjustments, change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the foreseeable future.
Reading back over what I have just written, it sounds as though I have had some sort of disaster or calamity in my life. That is not the case. No big, single thing. Just little things, that individually and encountered separately would be addressed and resolved as a matter of course.
My Monday was a Murphy's Law sort of day, I suppose you could say. One thing, then another, then another .... add six or seven needed course corrections in a short period of time, and you really do want to just sit down and have a good stiff drink.
So that is what I did.
Once again, and for too many days and weeks and months in a row, I am feeling the urgent call for change. For a healing of a beleaguered planet. A weariness settles across my soul, and I ask myself can I really continue to put out this call for Earth, healed? How many of us will it take to encourage kindness, to plead for compassion, to pray for understanding, before the tide turns?
I am just one voice, a tired and not really battle ready middle aged white woman who lives in a place that you have to really search for hard on a map.
My network is a bedraggled collection of people across the globe, sort of. But there really is not a cohesion, and no single purpose or creed represented. There is diversity, that much is true.
So after this meandering miscellany of Ellen's brain, I realize the theme this week is wisdom in one of my online communities. So how to tie this all together?
Wisdom comes of experience, and observation, I would think. Or at least that would be two components.
But wisdom is not automatic.
Wisdom is needed, here in this day and time.
Worldwide.
We see the EU situation, and animals that are tossed like trash for someone else to clean up.
We see Trump could really be elected president, because, hey, Brexit.
We see floods and fires and no-one connecting the dots in terms of what humans have done to exacerbate the climate issues.
We see freedoms that were bled to obtain being summarily voted away and riddled with real and metaphorical bullets.
I have no answers.
Just lots and lots of questions.
And very little wisdom.
I want to close with a Facebook memory from a year ago :
Several years ago, Roger and I were in a local grocery store standing in line to check out. Directly in front of us was an older gentleman holding a young girl, she looked to be maybe 18 months old. Riotous blonde curls, big blue eyes, rosebud mouth, porcelain complexion. There was a red balloon tied to a shelving support. She wanted that balloon. She had big crocodile tears, puddling up in her eyes, looked as though they would spill down her cheeks at any minute. She had one hand clasped around the man's neck and was reaching out to the balloon with the other. Her little lip was just quivering and she was saying "Boon. Boon". Now he was having none of this, he stoically held his ground and paid for their items and left. Rog and I, well were we the grandparents in that situation would probably have bought her a dozen "boons". I do not think that he was being mean, just firm. Not giving in, you know? Because little girls with crocodile tears welling up in their eyes can really work on a person's heart, as can little boys with pouty mouths and soulful looks. Just a memory I wanted to share.
I have a vision of Earth, Healed. Be Kind. It costs nothing and can mean everything.
~ Ellen Apple 6/28/2016
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