“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”~Wendell Berry

Posted by Ravenous Butterflies

*****

On days like this my friend asks, what’s it all about? What is this life? Why is it such a struggle? She struggles with the decision she has to make. Wrestles with it, like the angel and Jacob, it’s that serious and that life-altering. I’m not much help. I tell her to just make a choice and move on. I try to gently urge her into the giving up of attachment without those words. She has no patience for Buddhism or Buddist beliefs. Still, the truth of it is that it’s the attachment to what could be lost or what the outcome of her choice and actions will be that is making her crazed.

But I’ve been there. I’ve wanted everything to be perfect. I’ve wanted us all to be happy. I’ve searched and struggled for the perfect answer to those things which cannot be without some sacrifice, by someone. And once done, no way to be undone.

Gunggex Durga Laksmi· Golden Evening

And it suddenly occurs to me that that is what I’m doing. I’m trying to give her peace. I’m trying to make it OK for her. That is my attachment—the attachment to the right outcome for her. The one I cannot give her.