Your Invitation

Soulmate or Solemate?, Kailua, HI, April 2020, Nikon D600 with FX 28-300mm VR lens, 135mm,
1/160 sec @ f10, ISO 200, -0.33 EV, no flash © Steven Crisp  [Click on the photo to enlarge]

Your Invitation

Are you frustrated with your life?
Asking why this befalls you or that keeps on happening?
Wishing some pain would just go away?
Wondering why you feel so tired or trapped by despair?

You could take up arms!  Cinch tight your armor!
Spend every free moment devising the master battle plan!
Envision the vanquishing of your archest enemy!
Surely then, with your foot upon his neck, the sun will shine brightly!

Funny thing about life.  The sun is always shining brightly.
It’s just that some days clouds bless the earth with rain.
Each night, if we look up, distant stars will twinkle.
And we may glimpse the infinite vastness of life unfolding.

So let us recalibrate our thinking. Judge not each day,
By the harvest that you reap, but by the seeds that you sow.
That’s the measure of control you have with life.  
Then, if conditions are favorable, life will be bountiful.

But when conditions leave the ground dry and barren, 
As life surely will from time to time, you have
Only two choices:  1) Acceptance;  2) Acceptance, 
While you till the soil and water by hand.

The truth about life is that we are not in control 
Of the whole of it.  But we can influence our role in it.
We can check our motivations, reset our expectations.
See that it is our actions that count, and not our wishes.

This is the good news.  Everything you can control is 
before you and inside you.  Before your ego is hurt or stroked.
Inside the heart and soul of your very Being.  Go There.
To that place of Knowing.  A subtle Opening.  That’s your Invitation.

Note, this post was inspired by a quote I read this morning, and you'll find my 

close approximation of his words above:

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant."

-- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1094), Essayist, Poet, Novelist