Strength comes from high and low places.
Argument is meaningless, often entrenching people further in a contrary belief. I have, likewise, never seen complaining do anything more than fill time, and bring an addictive, low level entertainment that you could find by simply discussing the day, or watching the average comedy show.
It is a matter of perspective, but I would like to raise the suggestion that instead of seeing unpleasant and negative things as kindling to fuel emotions, that a step forward digs us out, it can dig out the mould and rot surrounding the garden of our minds and nature.
While it is always gratifying to hear something positive said about me, there are few things I’ve found more encouraging to me that contemplating my progress clearly, and feeling horror at how little I have achieved, or the space between here and where I need to be. It could, and has in the past held me in a place that is really apathetic, or useless. Taking no step is the same as a step backward. When, like an alarm, like a gunshot at the plank, the diver or aspiring explorer reacts and sets themselves loose to the sound.
I tie this website, this writing instinctively with the early hours of the morning. Not long after, travelling, I see the sky before the sunrise. It’s always cold, often unpleasantly so. You can see tiny little dots of frost glittering things. On several roads, or using the train you see winter or the pre-dawn digging into things. People around me are often in high-vis, wrapped up and girded for their day. And as I walk, all of this seems to be what causes the vitality of life. There is one particular hedge I see, all through winter it has retained the same lime green colour. Healthy despite the cold, or covered in fat drops of rain. We are the same; the more we experience and see discomfort, the more we are augmented. Growth, not shivering not only save us, they sustain us. Do the ducks hovering together in a pool at 5:00AM quack to each other, lamenting their fortune? No more than the person jogging in cold weather.
The more I push, the more I write, and read, and explore; the more I see people awake before and after I am. Who have spent years cultivating homes, or taken up a new habit in the span of a day. There is nothing like the world itself, endlessly offering things for us if we reach out for them. There is endless noise; but so much to listen to. And the most important thing to hear is yourself. Your wants, even the negative experiences within you are the same muck you see sheltering oysters with their pearls, the filth that is always black and brown gold to life growing rich and vibrant with its nutrients.
The world, in many ways right now is covered in manure. Do we wrinkle our noses at the smell, or till the fields with it?
All the best,
J.W.H. Hobbs.
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