Learning Curves

"Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!


And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.


Hallelluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings."


-Halleluiah, a poem by Mary Oliver


I had a bit too much wine this evening, which was nice, and then I let a man get under my skin about something stupid. We're all human (even yoga instructors with soothing yoga voices). And sometimes we can forget that other people, being human, will act in strange ways (and then our soothing yoga voices become a little un-soothing). But I am awake at 3:30 and I am thinking about the complexity of life and people and relationships.


And yet, I am also marveling at "how wondrous the world is" that allows all of this beautiful complexity to exist.


Today is my anniversary and also my grandmother's birthday. Two events that have shaped my life. Two people who have loved me dearly and who I have loved back. What a lucky girl am I?


May we all get better at counting our blessings in the face of our challenges, but also love that part of ourselves that is not always strong, that needs us to give it a hug and a smile. That's ok, too. We're all on a learning curve and "nothing important is ever easy." Amen, sister. Amen.