Can you believe what is going on?

So the year started slow and steady, as years tend to do. But it was actually more like the year was sneaking in like a hungry snake trying to eat a rat, my rat. Twenty-twenty is the year of the rat in the Chinese calendar. I was looking forward to a nice year. I am a rat, the rat wins the race.

Instead, we saw the possibilities for steady and predictable happiness dwindle, sometimes even disappear. Death and destruction, the real thing, not the imagined one, surrounds us. Death and disease piles up around and it is all one could do not to surrender to it. Paranoia sets in and we suspect every surface and person, every movement and intention. Questioning "who is in and who is out?" the game of living is not for the softies. I had already learned that life is not the dressed rehearsal, life is the thing that happens in front of your eyes, every second, like now, like now. Like now.  What is the thing to learn now?

Optimism is starting to look naive. I do see many silver linings. For one, we finally have to quit the BS. Plans are not enough, actions are required. BLM has been brought to the front, perhaps because we now have a common enemy in the WH. This I have learned, I now understand the outrage. The burning of the Wendy's, I get it. Ok, more silver linings... I am getting an inordinate amount of time with my most loved ones. I am still not tired of them. Yes, it is challenging, yes I feel like the invisible woman most of the time.  But I also have had two heads resting on my chest while watching a movie, I have also given them  warm homemade bread and we have talked to each others, sometimes as people. Yes, there will be good things coming out of the first half of the 2020, but we won't see them just yet. This is an egg, we are developing something that we cannot quite see with clarity yet.

Optimism is starting to feel forced. There are layers and layers of stress on top of other layers that started in November of 2016. They never went away, we just kept turning our faces away from the horror and we have now gone 360 to find out that we are surrounded. Who is in our team? Everywhere you look you try to find an ally and identify the enemy. Why the binary? Refuse the binary as a lack of imagination and as unnecessary anxiety. The world is vastly hued and being conformed with duality is simply the curse of simple minds. Reality is complex. Honor it. Then, truly meditate this time because there is no place to go but inside. Inside the house and deeper inside our chests and minds. Lots of stretching are needed because what we need to touch is not our toes, it is our true self. Chase the true self. That part where I might not quite be the agnostic I normally am but quite a believer. That part that is me, and that is you, and that is beyond both of us, but pretty close to the flowers and the snow.