the quiet life

I feel so boring lately.

I go from work to my garden and back again. In between, I read.

Boring, perhaps, but never bored.

Time ticks away ever faster, and there is never enough. So many things to see, to read, to absorb, to write, to hear, to embrace. So much light to grow toward.

I steal moments here and there. Watching flowers open and ants climb hills of their own making. Reading books that make me cry or open my eyes and my heart to new things. Playing songs that take me back to times and places long gone.

There is a lot of solitude in my life. I wish I were better at being social. That's the one thing I would change about myself if I could. But, no regrets. I am who I am. It took me a long time to accept this fact. That's one of the best things about getting older. You accept more, including yourself.

I am, at heart, a hermit. I need my space. Which is funny because I live in a tiny, cozy little house. But outside my door, it's wide open. Which is why you will find me out there whenever possible...

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I started this post early last week, and then busy-ness got in the way, and I made plans to finish it over the weekend. Before the tragedy in Aurora.

But in coming back to complete what I had started, I found that I had little more to say. I suddenly found myself incredibly grateful for my boring life. Humbled by the fragility of it all. Scared and scarred and filled with questions. Questions that will never be answered.

Everything that goes on around us colors our life. Even as we move forward, we are altered, however slightly, by what we see and hear in the world. Some days, that alone is enough to make me want to bury my head in the sand.

And yet, I know that is not the answer. And like Anne Frank, I continue to believe that people are really good at heart. At least, I want to continue believing that.  And so, I cling to hope the way a child will cling to a teddy bear. For comfort and distraction, as both a shield and a bit of softness in a very hard world.

And I hope, against hope, that hope is the one thing in my quiet life I shall never outgrow.

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Sending love and light to all the victims and those whose lives they touched.