Searching for the bright side.

I’ve been in my house for six days straight, except for occasionally standing on my porch to breathe.  Through the transom over the door, I see that the meadow glistens with the fresh green of a burgeoning spring.  I heard baby birds through the bathroom window this morning.  I did not hear the geese; I think they have continued their northward travels.  They will return, assuming the world endures; and whether or not I manage to do so.

When I began my #journeytojoy in December of 2013, I could not have foreseen this intense week of enforced solitude.  Nor could I have envisioned that I would struggle to see the bright side of confinement as part of a world-wide pandemic.  Yet here I sit, in my tiny bedroom, at my tiny desk, in my tiny house, while the last of the winter winds sweep across the island and the world teeters on the brink of madness.

I pause.  

The world could end, it’s true.  Perhaps not tomorrow; but possibly in a few weeks or months.  The planet itself might continue to orbit the sun, while human life implodes.  A wicked virus whips through nation after nation, preying on the weak and the aged.  Politicians bicker over solutions and publicly imply that a few of us might have to fall on our swords in the name of capitalism.  Lament comes easy to my pursed lips in the face of such folly, such disastrous selfishness.

But I refrain.

Since I have little, I can easily survive with less.  Since I have so much compared with many,  fortune shines through even this dreadful mist.  Trapped for this spate of time in the 198 square feet which I crafted for myself, I see its imperfections but find joy in its precious contours.  I stand on the bright side.  I shall linger here for a little while yet, before I face whatever tomorrow brings.

It’s the twenty-third day of the seventy-fifth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

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