What one calls Destruction, Another Calls Life

Found beside Kenilworth Stairs

I saw a snail today inching along a tree branch heading for the leaf that was its day’s food. A few weeks earlier I had found snail shells in my garden. The internet announced in no uncertain terms that all snails should immediately be killed. Their sole purpose in life was to destroy your beautiful garden plants by eating the leaves. Today in a different setting I saw the actual snail and realized that it too was just trying to survive.

This got me wondering about my reaction to loss. As it happens I have experienced a great deal of loss in the last eight years. Despite the fact that every loss eventually led to positive outcomes, each time I am confronted by loss, it is the end of the world. My mind goes into overdrive convincing me that horribly disastrous things are about to happen. All the positive messages in the world are unable to stem the flow of despairing cries to anyone, physical or not, to save me.

All I really have to do is to remember the snail and apply my imagination. One of my favourite (judging by the number of times I've experienced it) losses is the disappearance of money. Since I don’t really think that someone else is benefitting because I don’t have money, the question becomes what life am I gaining from the holes in my bank account? Life is not about how many toys I have or can accumulate. It is about the relationships that I choose to participate in (with any member of any species).  It is about recognition. It is about encountering the world.  All of these are not only free but desperately welcomed. Open my door and my heart and I gain my life.

POWER

Ontario Parks Lightening

  

            I found the above picture when glancing through my Face book page. Whether seen in the night sky or in a picture, the sight is impressive.  For a moment we are struck by the immense majesty and overwhelming power of nature.  A huge city of lights is as nothing when nature decides to put on a light show.

            Generally that is it.  Oh wow look at that. Now back to life.  Life means whatever worries or plans are consuming us at the moment. Yet what would happen if instead of diving back into what is a very small pool, we stopped.  We stopped and looked.

            Nature surrounds us every day, everywhere.  Many people today look to nature for scientific solutions to humanity’s problems.  Look around you and see how many bio words exist already. I am not a scientist. I wonder about why people do things but since I am of the firm belief that everyone is unique, I am not concerned with predictability or statistics.

            That picture tells me that there is power in this world, a power much greater than mine.  It reminds me that I have no ability to control the elements that surround me.  In fact nature pretty much does as it pleases.  With our digging up, rearranging, cutting down and planting, we may think we control but that new tree growing out of the stump tells us differently.

            Yet despite all the beauty and power around us, we still believe that control is everything.  Those who have it are admired, those who don’t are scorned.  Yet where is our proof.  It certainly can’t be found in nature. In nature, diversity is everything.  Nothing in nature can or does exist as a singularity.  Everything in nature affects something else. 

            That impressive lightning strike reminds me that any control I think I have is an illusion.  Let it go and join with the huge diversity of life.  Let life enhance me, while I enhance it.