Alright
Artwork by Tu-2. Smile
Things will be alright. It is okay to smile. The world is going its way and one can only say, "This ride is is truly wild."
Today the rains will stop for a short time, but the ground remains wet. The waters in some places continue to flood, and the hospitals are full with patients who need emergency care, regular visits, and a place for new life to enter even as other lives depart. The energy does not subside. This is called life.
As one scans the news, domestic and international, it is possible to see that events are strangely similar, no matter where in the world societies exist. There are conflicts that are being pursued by governments, people struggling with the need for basic shelter and food, and stories that highlight how individuals play roles in helping to ease the suffering as well as create suffering for the rest. The news of one New York politician who has lied in an unfathomable, bold way is being used to illustrate how deranged political pursuit can get. How does one seek to be elected in today's elections without a strategy for responding to the unflattering (let alone entirely fabricated) facts of one's life? This is truly what could be called "chutzpah" - the audaciousness is almost funny, except it's not. But a smile might appear momentarily on one's face as the incredulous story continues to unfold. Faking each other out is a well-worn prankster behavior, but doing it on this scale is rare.
Things will be alright. The news today balances the tragedies with stories about someone who has won a $1.35 billion jackpot. Maybe some of that - after covering debts - will be used to help others in trouble in life. Maybe a small fund will be created to provide food, medicine, and shelter in a local community, or maybe there will be a way to give a few young people a chance to pursue higher education so that the next generation has a shot at making our world a little less difficult to navigate and occupy as time passes. One can hope that the winner of the jackpot has such a head, and heart. Has this person come to this moment having spent many hours thinking about what they might do if suddenly they came into an enormous amount of money? Or is this a person who has worked hard all their life and already has had the experience of having enough. Are they able to consider sharing with the rest of the world after taking care of their own needs? Has choosing what to do when the unexpected happens been easy for this person? Or, are choices really a burden because so much thought, calculation, weighing has to happen before a decision lands?
The thing that might inspire one to be more courageous about choices that appear - suddenly or choices that have to simmer for a long while - is beauty. Something about an encounter with something, somewhere, someone beautiful flips a switch. Energy, creativity, generosity, light seems to enter in such encounters. And oddly, even in times of struggle and crisis, the antennae that finds beauty is there - perhaps very tiny for some, and for others the antennae is quite big, but it is there because we are human.
Where do we find it? How does it make us smile and know that things, in some corners of the world have the singular purpose of giving us a chance to feel okay about life. It is an important, or maybe essential quality - to be able to find beauty and cultivate one's own capacity to discover it. It might even be a survival skill in today's world.
The beauty might be found in a way that is entirely unique - as in a melody, a flower's full blossom, a sunrise, a person's caring, a piece of fabric and how it feels to the touch. We forget. And now and then it is worthwhile - to remember and allow for beauty to enter because it has the effect of somehow making the moment okay. We can say to life, "Alright."