I see…I write…I am.

pictures, poetry and thoughts on the human experience.

recent posts

about

  • Count Your Blessings

    Blessings in your life,

    Visible but often missed.

    Learning to notice.

    How many times have we heard the phase, “count your blessings”?  Or we should write a “gratitude journal”, to remind ourselves of all the things we have in our lives that we are to be grateful for.  Does it occasionally seem that we are made to feel guilty if we don’t offer up a public offering of our gratitude?  Yet another failing that we are forced to feel.  But what is wrong with quietly enjoying, even basking in the positives in our lives?  Without the negatives, we would never enjoy the positives.  But without the positives, we wouldn’t have negatives to complain about!  I would hope that we would all try to concentrate on the positives, rather than the negatives in our lives, but take the pressure off…there is no need to show them to anyone but ourselves.

  • Tranquility

    Frustrations fade as

    eyes grow soft, vision expands,

    Tranquility dawns.

    How wonderful is that moment when you first feel tranquility stealing over you.  That fleeting moment when the jaw relaxes, the shoulders drop and the eyes soften.  It seems that those moments are so rare and precious in our busy lives that often times we lose the ability to truly appreciate them when they appear.  How wonderful would it be if we were able to give ourselves a daily gift of tranquility!  Perhaps over a  cup of coffee in the morning before our day gets ahold of us.  Or perhaps in the evening, as twilight dims her light on the stresses of the day.  Enjoy your gift to yourself!

  • Solitary

    A single blossom

    Surrounded yet set apart

    Self-companionship.

    Our society does not seem to value the ability to be alone.  We are constantly inundated with the idea that we must always be with someone, either romantically, socially or even in the workplace.  That being alone is a negative state that should be avoided whenever possible.  How unfortunate that we are not supposed to be comfortable with the idea of keeping ourselves company, of learning to enjoy our own thoughts, ideas and feelings without the distractions of others.  Many times, we are in the best company when we are by ourselves.

  • Growth

    Small leaves reaching out

    New sprout from unlikely place

    Growth makes a difference.

    Sometimes we grow in unexpected ways.  Do we really know what are our strengths and weaknesses?     Should we be expected to know everything about ourselves or are we allowed to be surprised when we discover that we’ve grown and changed in an accidental way?   It seems that part of the allure of self-exploration is finding areas of yourself that have previously been unnoticed.  Like this leaf sprouting from its unlikely spot, how have you grown in an unexpected way?

  • My Shell

    Twisted up tightly,

    Unsure and out of my element

    Unrecognizable.

    It is disconcerting to discover that you hide  to protect yourself.  We sometimes find ourselves in situations where we just do not feel like a “fit”.  It might be social situations, it could be work, hopefully it isn’t at home.  The realization that the people around you have no interest in looking beyond their opinions, views or agendas.  It doesn’t matter who you really are, or who you have grown to be, they will only see the person they have conjured up.  Guilty of having judged others, I receive a good lesson when judged unfairly.  I curl up into my shell and try to shut out the hurt.  I want to reach out into the light and move along my life.  Perhaps when the danger has passed, I will feel safe enough.

  • Beneath a Tree

    Sit beneath a tree,

    Listen to the wind whisper,

    Sharing it’s secrets.

    How wonderful it is to just sit beneath a tree and exist.  To feel the sun and shade on your face, to listen to the wind, to feel the grass beneath you and the bark of the tree at your back.  No worries, no intrusions, no schedules and no tasks, except to simply breathe and be.

  • Trapped

    Unable to see,

    The trap’s escape eludes me.

    Dreams of flight remain.

    Having a dream, but being unable to see the way to achieving it is a true trap of the self.  Frequently we have a dream but end up so frustrated because we cannot see any way to get out of our present situation and work towards our goal.  Our jobs, our lives, our responsibilities or our limitations as we see them all make up our self-trap.  Instead of staring straight at the part that holds us back, perhaps we should try taking a hard look all around us and find the way to fly towards our dreams.   To look at the ways we CAN, instead of all the ways we CANNOT is the secret to our escaping the self trap.

  • A Gardener’s Efforts

    One beautiful bloom

    Carrying  all of the love

    of a parent’s heart.

    Who has the harder task, the gardener or the flower? Few would deny that being a parent is hard work.  But perhaps being the child is just as difficult.  One side is trying to learn about the world, while the other side is trying to protect and nuture them in that world.   The flower sees the sun and reaches towards it.  The gardener worries about water and weeds.    Does the flower appreciate the gardener’s efforts or does it just find them frustrating?  Does the gardener lose sight of the bloom’s beauty due to the exhaustion from nourishing it?  Do not forget to appreciate the effort that went into your own “blooming”!

  • Joy

    It wells from inside,

    unbidden and unconstrained,

    Joy shouts loud and clear.

    Sometimes it might seem that joy is either difficult to find or even completely absent from our lives.  Our society would have us believe that joy and happiness are only present when we have new things, expensive things, are madly and freshly in love, or have claimed fame and power.  But joy lives within and all around us, if we allow ourselves to look.  This beautiful bank of tulips, an early present from a capricious spring is just a small example of the luxuries that fill our lives.  By recognizing and then removing society’s blinders, it becomes easier to see our joy.

  • Surrounding Us

    Life, joy and beauty,

    Sometimes where least expected,

    Always surround us.

    The busy lives we lead do not always leave much room for appreciating what lies all around us.  It becomes doubly hard when, in addition to being busy, we are tired, stressed and always feeling like we are three steps behind where we think we should be.  What if we tried to take regular “beauty breaks” as a way to counter what sometimes seems to be an overwhelming amount of negativity in our lives?  Take the time to appreciate the positive that surrounds us every day.