What's Love Got To Do?

image credit.... dd mag

You're the only one who knows when you're using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you're opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is - working with it rather than struggling against it. You're the only one who knows.....Pema Chodron

the strangest discontent seems to have settled over me as of late. i find that i am tired more than i remember. i feel helpless with regard to my good friend who is getting sicker. i have sensed some things change around me where i spend most of my day and angst whooshes into the vacant space created by the changes.

i am reminded of buried thoughts and beliefs and they create unease like whisper of rumors by ghosts of those lost. my nature and my shortcomings  circle back into my daily life like jehova's witnesses knocking with inconvenience.

there is no fanfare here. there is no depth of despair. it is merely inconvenience and what i call the mirror of cruelty. sometimes in my living, i will catch glimpses of myself and the image i see in the shop window i am passing or the mirror across the room while in the loo and be gobsmacked. i won't want to see the image in front of me but i do. i recognize the image clearly, but am disconnected from the possiblility that i  resemble that image. these reflections i encounter can only come from a mirror of cruelty. it's hard truth, and it ain't pretty- at all.

the gift in this though is humility. i completely believe there's a gift in this. i still get inspired to a high degree in my life and i think that a sense of entitlement and impenetrability entwine my reality. so maybe the recurrence of  my former self helps to tether me to earth.