Daily moments

 My dear Birdie

Funny you should write about joy my friend. Our new home here on the island brings me daily doses of joy that I didn't experience in Ontario. I get it from the mountains. Every time I see those snow packed peaks or the incredible skies that wrap their sometimes light and wispy, sometimes dark and moody clouds above and around those craggy rocks. Their magnitude and brilliance kind of settles me. Something about scale reminds me of my position on this amazing planet. You would think that seeing such an astonishing thing would make me feel small and insignificant, but on the contray, I feel empowered by them. I feel like the world is so amazing and I'm part of it, that to accomplish anything on this weird and wacky planet is so incredible. It's strange isn't it how we remember the bad, or our mistakes, we remember the sorrow more than the joy. I dwell sometimes on what I perceive to be my lack of achievements, but I've done some things that are pretty cool. I stumbled on something called 'The Scale of the Universe' online the other day (apparently I'm the last one to see it as my excited beckoning to the boys was greeted with an implied 'duh, every body knows about that'; see how I took that so negatively!) As I scrolled out from human to the edge of the universe, I stopped as the length of a marathon appeared, bigger than the international space station, bigger than the pyramids, bigger than Vatican city or Everest or Halley's comet, a marathon is long, really long and I ran it. I ran it kind of last minute, not able to do the proper amount of training, but I trained hard and I ran it and ran it well, just missing the under 4hr time I was aiming for by 3 minutes. I've jumped out of an aeroplane (on purpose), I've hiked the Inca trail, swam in every ocean, raised two outstanding children, one of which I'm homeschooling (and let me tell you that takes some patience and skill!) and now I live in an rv as we wing it across this continent. Oh and let's not forget the little matter of autism being in our lives. At some point in our history a conversation was had by myself, my husband and our son about laughter and my husband made the comment that I don't laugh much. That horrified me, was that really true? I felt like I was laughing, but perhaps I wasn't, perhaps I was to busy being responsible, serious and pent up that I forgot to laugh when things were flippant and just outright funny. Now I laugh and not that inside 'Ha' that's over with so quickly. Now I giggle until tears roll down my face and I feel so much better. I try really hard now to slice myself one colossal piece of joy everyday and savor every mouthful.

Glad you are embracing your joy my friend, don't ever feel guilty about that. We have been conditioned to believe that we can't have both at the same time, but we can. They are not related in any shape or form, they are independent of each other and should be treated so.

Always yours
Sparrow