If peace comes from seeing the whole,
then misery stems from a loss of perspective.
We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky.
The
little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens.
Then we stub our
toe, and in that moment of pain,
the whole world is reduced to our poor
little toe.
Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk.
With every
step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.
Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day - the pinch
we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?
It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery.
In truth,
we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to
eat,
that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of
our days,
our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down,
cropping
out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs
are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like.
When
we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything.
We forget when we
were lonely, dreaming of a partner.
We forget first beholding the beauty
of another.
We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and
heard.
When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night
annoyed by the
way our lover pulls the covers
or leaves the dishes in the sink without
soaking them first.
In actuality, misery is a moment of
suffering
allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable,
we
must look wider than what hurts.
When feeling a splinter, we must, while
trying to remove it,
remember there is a body that is not splinter,
and
a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.
~ Mark Nepo
