Missing
the Mark
“Unrest
of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents
itself and in the solving of them we can take our greatest pleasure.”
Karl A.
Menninger
You may (or may not) have
noticed that I didn't post yesterday. I overslept, which means I woke
up at 5:30 instead of 5:00; then I spent an hour trying to upload an
image of the harvest moon to no avail. I wanted to write about the
changing of the season, about the upcoming Equinox, but by the time I
spent that hour in the utter frustration of techno-hell, I couldn't
write a single word. I just had to go walk Liza in the alleys, and
let my head stop boiling. Sometimes, when problems present
themselves, we just don't appreciate what a great pleasure it is to
solve them; this especially happens when we don't, in fact, solve
them.
So, maybe I don't need to
write about the change in season (since here in Alabama it isn't
changing much—daytime temperatures are still in the 90's with no
end in sight). Maybe I wasn't listening to my muse—whoever she
is—and launched off on my own ego interests. Clearly, technology is
not my problem to solve. Maybe I'm called upon by Spirit, to dig a
little deeper than the season and the harvest moon (which, by the
way, was spectacular over the weekend, and still is, though it's now
waning). The problems to be addressed by such a one as me are
problems of a different nature—they are problems of the human
spirit, of listening to the stirrings of soul in everyday life. I
missed the mark.
It is often as difficult
to discover which problems are ours to solve, and which are not ours
to solve, as it is to actually solve them. Sometimes, we spend an
entire lifetime trying to address someone else's issues, or trying to
resolve a problem that happened a long time ago. Usually, this is
because we don't want to see, or acknowledge, our own problems in the
here and now. Other peoples problems, or problems in the distant past
that are no longer resolvable, are a diversion. They keep us in denial
about our own issues that are happening right this minute. I can't
say there's any pleasure in discovering this, but once we do, there
is a much greater likelihood of actually solving the real problem. That
will give us pleasure; and not only pleasure, but freedom.
(I hope you grab a chance
to see the harvest moon tonight. It's pretty beautiful even at
half-staff. Just saying...)
In the Spirit,
Jane
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