Lyena's
Journal
12.18.2003
Driving today through traffic, on my way home from visiting a friend, sun behind me, people frantic with holiday obligations and whatever stressors are filling their lives, and I'm smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. Caught myself beaming and got self-conscious: Where does that come from? I'm a little more than a year paralyzed, my life has been turned upside down, some of the most precious things in my life are missing and I'm more deeply happy than I can remember being for a long, long time. What is that??
Not that I'm complaining. There's plenty in the world and in my life to make me miserable. And there are plenty of days when I am. And they suck. So I'm not looking to go back there. But it's just so odd to me.
When I ask myself why I feel so good, I find myself listing all the wonderful things in my life: Dean, my friends, my creativity, my family, the kindness of strangers, my dogs, the weather (it was beautiful today)..... But all of those things exist everyday and I definitely don't feel like this everyday.
So why now? Why should those things eclipse the other things that exist everyday like being paralyzed and struggling with related health issues and facing the uncertainty of my life? I don't know. But since they all exist at once and constantly, it must have something to do with where I look. And with my faith. I feel so incredibly lucky to be alive. Had I been a little higher in that tree, I might have come down on my head. But I'm here. And half my body works perfectly. It's not enough for me, but it's worth my gratitude.
Still, I don't think I've nailed the reason. Because I didn't choose to look at the good stuff (at least, not today) and my gratitude shifts like the wind. It's as if I somehow became privy to a vision of beauty that includes all things, that includes the pain and destruction in the world we've created, that includes my own grief and devastation. It's not a fractured vision, one focused on either that which is good or that which is bad, but somehow whole in a way I can't explain and don't understand. And that wholeness is beautiful in a way I've never felt before, so beautiful in fact, that even with my eyes wide open to the horrors within and around me, I still catch myself beaming for no apparent reason. I wish I could bottle it and give it away. How different a world we'd be living in if I could.
Lyena | 18:14