Life takes many shapes and many forms, from the small little earthworm to the flowers that grow in the garden and brighten our lives.
We so often say that we need to open up our eyes and see that we are living more and more in a world of Geulah and not Golus, but often the fog of depression weighs us down in the dark and stops us from going out and taking a walk around the block.
I have a friend who is prone to depression. She is at home, lights turned off, watching TV and reading old books too overwhelmed by her plight to go out and see her friends, see the sunlight (because she has to pull the blinds open to do that) and in the middle of winter, up north she is missing the blue skies and the daffodils that are pushing up through the grass during what has been a blissfully, mild winter.
Just outside her house, down her steps, across the street not even 100 feet from where she lives are beautiful yellow daffodils, her favorite color... blooming in the sunshine.
I can go over, bring her some flowers, nudge her to go for a walk and talk but depending on her mood on that day she will not see what is there to see if she would only open her eyes.
I was going through an old calendar the other day and saw this beautiful picture and thought how perfect it is for the concept of opening our eyes.
Even when we are going through tragedy or despair there is still there... something that can make us smile or give us hope to go on....if only we open up our eyes and our hearts and our souls to let it in.
I've never been one of those people who believed if you were going over the cliff and about to fall to your death and you see the most beautiful strawberry, that you should reach out and grab it and savor the taste on your way down to death...though I do have a few friends who believe if it's there you may as well enjoy it. I suppose I'd smile, think on other strawberries in my life I had tasted and prayed.
Either way... the strawberries are on sale in the market, the flowers of spring are pushing up a bit early through the not so frozen ground and the sun is shining today.
Somewhere a baby is ill, an old person is dying, someone is suffering from cancer and someone is getting an A in a class or getting engaged.
Life goes on, without any real rhythm or rhyme.. you can look at the glass as half full or you can look at it as half empty or you can ....as my friend Bryna reminds me... remember that is always full, half filled with water, half filled with air.
Open up your eyes today, go outside, give thanks for all the beauties that you can see... do a good deed for someone else who needs a favor or a gift... breathe the air, smell the flowers... smell them for a sick friend who can't smell them today but will smell them again another day.
Make your favorite food! Listen to your favorite song!
Picture a world filled with goodness and kindness and really be the person you want to see in the world.
Bring a friend a flower, send a friend a flower... send them a picture online of a beautiful flower.
Be part of the solution and not part of the problem!
Give a smile, it's free, it's easy and you get one back in return.
When the Lubavitcher Rebbe said on CNN "it is only from our part to do something additional in the realm of goodness and kindness" we need to really take action not to just listen... to do more acts of goodness and kindness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_sx3PzUtjg
So, open up your eyes, open up the windows.... go outside, smell the air, look at the flowers, do an act of goodness and kindness today!
No comments:
Post a Comment