No matter how content we are at base level, and I am, the moods of the world creep in and assail our sense of self, of reality. Our own insecurities use the hesitancy to undermine our willingness to focus on the good stuff. We succumb to downbeat moods.
What to do, on such days?
It seems that my first instinct is just to give in to it. Sit with it for a while. Listen to what it has to say. And share that around my trusted few in case there is any value in it, any message I am missing.
Mostly not, it would seem. Mostly my trusted few give me the boot up the whatsit, to kickstart my stalled perceptions, to nudge me back onto the track.
So, with a little help from my friends, and a great deal of help from the rambling conversations that go on in the privacy of my Morning Pages, I eventually realise that all that has happened is that my focus has slipped from “abundance” to “lack”.
Even when we’re living the dream, there are things that didn’t get the memo. There are circumstances that weren’t factored in. There is weather. There are other people. There is the entire universe that lives within our own bodies that doesn’t always listen to our minds and refuses to allow the chi free passage. There are strikes and traffic jams. There are tides. There are recipes with bits missing. There are cupboards bare of the vital ingredient. There are things that go bump in the night. There are things that bite. There are things that fall off shelves and break. There are all the things that aren’t the way we want them to be.
When we dream, we get all ‘big picture’ and have a tendency to forget the details.
The devil is in the details. Ah but so are the angels.
Forgetting the details of the dream means also that we didn’t predict the richness of the dream. We didn’t predict the simplicity of it, and how easy it would be to attain, and we didn’t allow for the
abundance along the road to manifestation. So we can be startled by it. We can be lifted by it. All it needs is that we re-shift the focus, back from lack to abundance.
How do we do that?
Simple. Stop looking at what is not, and look at what is.
Don’t make it any more complicated than that.
Don’t think about “reframing” or “turning the negative into a positive” – because sometimes the brutal truth is that we cannot do so.
Simply look at other things. This isn’t to deny the struggles and hardships and fears and threats. It is to balance them, to understand that the world is not the vicious, dangerous, horrible place that some people would have us believe. It is not the totally corrupt and negligent realm of the powerful.
The world is just the world.
It is a small blue planet orbiting an unimportant sun in the vastness of space. And we are a part of the world. Intrinsically as beautiful as that planet.
We are made of wood and earth and metal and fire and water. And we are sustained by the air. That we exist at all is the most astonishing gift.
We are not always kind. But look at the other members of our nature family. They are also not always kind. A hedgehog raids a skylark nest. Orcas feast on seals. Caterpillars munch their way through our anticipated crops of fruit or flowers. Cats fight in the streets. Foxes scavenge the weak. Raptors swoop down on mammals beautiful in their own right. Grey squirrels have ousted the reds, out-competed them, unwittingly passed on a disease that is more deadly to their cousins than to them. Plants grow symbiotically, but they also parasitise. They also poison.
We speak of Mother Nature as if she were a kindly, all-loving soul. But she cannot have favourites and so she looks upon all of us plant and animal and insect and bird and living things that defy such easy classification and does her best. She gives us lessons. It is up to us to learn them.
Or not.
All of this is part of the abundance. The planet is abundant. Rich. Full of things we understand and things we don’t and things we think we do, but may be wrong about.
The planet is full of natural richness, things we know and things we have forgotten, and things we have yet to learn.
The planet is full of our own inventions, things that do good and things that do harm, and (mostly) things that do some of one and some of the other and we haven’t yet worked out the balance of good & ill.
The planet is full of people. We are abundant. Too many of us, quite probably, but we are where we are and there are those who suggest that the tipping point has been reached and that population growth is slowing, and it will eventually decline. Hopefully, soon enough.
The abundance of the human race is part of the problem – but could it not also be part of the solution?
Think of all those minds. Think of all that creative potential. Seven billion people, each of whom has a fundamentally or subtly different way of looking at the world and its problems, each of whom could come up with a new solution, or an old one re-worked, or just an old one re-deployed.
People do. They see desertification and they go out on the road with apple seeds and plant
trees. They see a forest being mutilated and they step up to say no. They see raw sewage being dumped in our water ways and they take the perpetrators to court. They see the land being degraded and decide not to buy certain products. They see faceless companies using their anonymity to con us into what seems like a good idea at the time and question and question and question, until truth is tempted forth. We can also do some of these things, or other things depending on who we are and what our souls call us to do and our gifts empower us to do.
Whenever you feel that the world is in a sorry state because of humans, consider that humans are also our best hope of re-set. Be one of the latter kind, and go out and do one small thing. Plant a seed in the ground or in a heart.
And when that doesn’t work, narrow your focus back to your own little corner of this blue planet in the vastness of space and time, and think upon your own abundance. I’m not here to tell you what that is for you. Not because I can’t - I could hazard a good guess – but because the whole point of living in abundance is that we have to notice it for ourselves. Decide to look, and to see, and to be grateful.
Then decide to share. One way or another.
These are a few of my pointers towards the abundance in my life, harvested from a day a week or so ago, when I wrote the first draft of this post:
I started writing this at lunchtime, and I’ve wandered in and out, so let me start with an abundance of time, and an absence of deadlines. The abundant freedom of writing something just because I think it matters, regardless of whether it will be read or not.
I have written it directly onto a laptop on a table outside my back door. So then, let me add: the wonders of IT, electricity, word-processing, wi-fi. The basic abundance of language, words and our ability to get thoughts from my head into yours.
As I sit here in the evening, I have just heard the click-clack of a train on a track on the other side of the city. That means the air is damp and maybe rain on the way. It is a sound from childhood, also only heard when the weather and wind were as they are tonight.
The beauty of the evening sky, sun-caught clouds and softer hues like distant impressionist seascapes. Gulls circling back to the marsh.
The scent of incense burning to keep the bugs at bay.
The bugs. There are ladybirds on the thistles, and bees nesting in the garage wall, all manner of
striped things dining on the brambles (bees and wasps and hoverflies). A lacewing in the bathroom.
Memories. I cannot sit out at this time of the day without being assailed by an abundance of
memory. All of it good. Campsites. A Hexenhaus. Riversides. Beaches. Distant lighthouses. Even more distant stars. Family. Friends. Laughter. Sleeping bags. Cold and damp. Early mornings and woodsmoke. Memory latches onto memory and spins its way through the years.
Birds. They’re all quietening now, bedding down. Today gave me pigeons and blackbirds and magpies: the usual suspects. No starling or jay or gold finch. But the blackbirds have found the trickling water in the cascade: a new bath, a new drinking spot. The magpies have remembered the water bowl in the back end.
I walked this morning. Suburban streets lined with verges and trees and gardens. Birds and bees. My own front garden is a-swarm in the salvias. Plants grow that I can’t identify. Butterflies don’t pause long enough for their ID shots. I walked in sun and shadows.
To swim in a pool that has just re-opened, struggling to get the chemical that makes it safe enough for us to use. I wonder how true that is, but at the same time I ponder how many people are involved in making that tiny ocean available to me on my weekday mornings. I ponder the infrastructure behind keeping that water warm enough, bug-free enough, clean and inviting. I ponder the training and re-training of the staff that watch over us. I ponder the lighting and the quietness and who made the decision not to have music blaring down on us, so we can simply
swim, up and down, counting the laps, remembering to breathe. The way the light of the clocks reflects on the water. The hot shower to wash the chlorine out of my hair and off my skin. And the walk home.
Abundance everywhere.
Butterflies that skip across my path down the back lane. The tiny moth that lands on my gate.
Salad food in the fridge. The very fact of a fridge. A home to come home to. And an afternoon to spend writing frivolous stuff.
When the world closes in on me, I need to remember that abundance is the key to opening it out again. I am blessed. I am lucky.
If you look in the right places, maybe you are too.
