You may have been seeking a panacea for life. You would like a cure. You might like to be on the sidelines, someone wise and wonderful who looks on life as if from a distance and nods sagely without being as affected by life as you presently are. Yes, somewhat above it all. Out of the fray. Out of the worry and concern. Simply a researcher doing research. “Ah, that’s how it is,” you say.
In a way you are an observer. You observe life going on right in front of you. You may feel that life hammers you, pulls you up and pulls you down. You don’t know what to expect of life. Life treats you as it wills, and you don’t quite grasp how to treat life as yet. You can’t quite get the hang of it. You’ve tried everything, yet you get flummoxed one way or another each time. You shake hands with life. You jump into life. You meet life half way. You run away from life, and you do the same things over and over again, yet life is always at least one step ahead of you. Sometimes you give up on life.
You may say to yourself: “Okay, I quit. I give up. I will expect nothing from life,” yet you keep on expecting right and left, and you are disappointed, disheartened, and aggrieved. You have an ax to grind with life, and you grind it. You grit your teeth. You just can’t seem to get a handle on life. Life outsmarts you with not so much as a by- your-leave.
At the same time as you may despair, you love life. You love before the rain, and you love after the rain. You love the hot sun and a cooling breeze. You love the very unexpectedness of life that also makes you despair. You love crowds even as you love solitude. You love a summer day, and you love a blustery winter day. You love the whole gamut of life as you protest it.
You may say you want to be left alone by life, yet you hold onto life for all it’s worth. You can’t contain all of it, yet you hold it to you.
Beloveds, you are life. You are alive in life. You participate whether you want to or not. While you are alive on Earth, you are alive on Earth. You may try to escape it, yet you can’t. No one can. You can’t always have life on your terms, yet you can come to terms with life. You can ease into it. You may not be able to be a Happy-Go-Lucky, yet you can be all right. You can live and let live. You can be on speaking terms with life and engage in it.
Look, life isn’t so bad. You have your good moments. You can come to peace with life. It is going to be over soon enough. It speeds by. You really don’t want it to stop. Even the unbearable is bearable. You are a trooper. You are high on life.
Life gives you the opportunity to run on all four burners. It gives you the opportunity to sleep and while away the mercenary called time. You can greet time. You can play in it. You can congregate in it. Time can move you, yet you can’t move it. It goes as fast or as slow as it desires. You are the desperado. Time isn’t.
Beloveds, truth be known, you are having the time of your life. Today life appears one way, and tomorrow another. Even as there is only today, you are immersed in the past and the future. You may rue today and love tomorrow, and you never know what will happen next.
Cannot life be okay whatever tune it may play? Can you not love the music and play on? Can you not love life whatever its season? Can you not love?