WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Thursday, November 25, 2021

CARELESS

            I would like to be careless today. 

            I know the word ‘careless’ carries mostly negative meanings, suggesting recklessness and negligence, but I’m thinking of it as simply meaning less care – fewer worries and fears and regrets.  The kind of carelessness I’m speaking of is the kind I imagine winds having as they blithely blow among trees in a forest, or rivers as they casually sweep over stones and around boulders and among downed trees. This is the kind of carelessness that could carry me along as easily as clouds are carried across the sky, or as hours unceremoniously pass by from dawn to dark. Maybe today I could say “I don’t care” more often, as in “I don’t care if I’m always happy today”, or “I don’t care if I get what I want”.  Maybe my kind of carelessness simply means stepping aside and caring less about what happens and more about simply observing, understanding, and appreciating what happens. Maybe the carelessness I’m speaking of is about simply accepting life rather than scuffling with it.  

            I want to work hard today and be watchful and sympathetic, but I would also like to be with life in a care-less and lighthearted way, just letting it flow – and learning all I can from the flow.  

And here’s a poem from a few years back on a similar theme …

A FLUID AND GRACEFUL DAY
(3/28/18)

One day, everything seemed large,
like large-scale love,
like a sizable breakout from ordinariness -- 
a substantial present
presented, it seemed, just to him. 
There were considerable blessings everywhere, 
and ample profits full of pleasure, 
and expansive ideas spreading everywhere, 
and fluidly and gracefully flowing 
for him.

Some lovely dried leaves seen on our walk this morning …

And our newly reorganized sunroom …