Balance...

My haiku for 2/8 - Tai chi mirrors life/ Expanding and contracting/ Around our center.

It has been a wild year so far. On the one hand, it has been the warmest year to date ever recorded worldwide, yet here it has been snowing on and off on the 21st & 22 of May! By now most of our garden is usually planted. Not this year.

From volcanoes to floods, earthquakes to tornadoes and other windstorms, nature has been wild much of the time. Our man made events, especially the massive oil rig collapse and resulting leak and slick in the Gulf of Mexico, are just as dramatic.
On top of that we focus on other less dramatic, but still incredibly important on other scales, affairs of politics, community, personal life. It's a wonder that any of us is able to maintain any cheerfulness at all. But it is the nature of living things to move toward the future with hopefulness and to seek balance and joy in their lives.

I have some favorite quotes to share:

"To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic." -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

How can you work for change and to better your life without optimism?

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; and absurdities crept in; Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

How can we move forward if we are ever buried under the baggage of the fear of what we did wrong in the past?

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. and behold, service was joy." -Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)

How can you live life with joy until you recognize the acts you perform in life are joyous?

What is in the world, good and bad, is what is. With this knowledge you can go forth and do the best you can. It should not impede you from doing good for yourself, your family, your community and the world. Rather it should empower you to know that anything you can achieve counts. Everything counts. And every positive accomplishment, no matter how small, is an important move forward. It is our response to life that balances what happens.

Today is not the day I can plant my garden. It is freezing and too wet. The garden will go in very late, the fruit trees will bear little. But the soil is refreshed and the water table is restored after many dry years. The garden will catch up the way it does when the conditions warm to its liking.
And I am learning to be patient.