In these days of stay-at-home orders, social distancing, and essential services only, it is easy to fall into a spiral of stress, anxiety, and depression.
But truth is, the world is still turning, the sun still rises, and life still goes on.
So I promised myself last night that if the sky looked even remotely ok that I would find a way to break orders and take my early morning cup of coffee down at the lake.
Once, I fed the babies, I did just that. Camera bag in the trunk of the car and cup of coffee in the drink holder I set off while the skies were like my coffee (and allegedly my soul) … pure black.
Half way there I could see that the skies were going to be clear, so the only real worry I had was whether the police would gun me down for breaking curfew. But I was fully prepared to tell them this was an essential trip as my soul was running on empty and badly in need of a refill.
I did get some neat shots of a clear-sky twilight and enjoyed the rich taste of the coffee as the birds broke silence and began to herald in the new day. A surfacing alligator got me to back up slightly from my water-level position but I hope you enjoy these shots regardless.
I drove home with my soul full and ready for another day in isolation. And it reinforced in me what I already knew. That despite our tendencies to worry and panic, life still continues all around us.
We are just a part of the natural world and try as we might to make existence about us, it isn’t. We are not as important as we think we are.
Yes, there are awful things happening out there and hopefully we make it through this without loss of our loved ones. But even if we don’t life will continue.
For some reason, in our evolution to extended life, we have somehow become so obsessed with living that we have made death our enemy.
In the past millennium we have nearly doubled our life span and there are some out there who seem to think that they should live forever. But we shouldn’t.
There is a natural cycle of life and death throughout all aspects of the natural world and despite our self-elevation, we are simply a part of that cycle.
So much of our lives have become fear-based. We fear other countries, so we pour billions of dollars into defense forces. We fear those that might take our guns away, so we vote in self-adoring dotards that undermine our other “rights”. We fear strangers, so we build walls.
We fear death, so we pump our veins full of pharmaceuticals that line the pockets of the wealthy class.
And yet the only real thing we should fear is fear itself.
Because it is fear that undermines our happiness and gets us to behave in the most inhuman of ways. Fear can rob us of living, which is really what life is supposed to be about.
Life may indeed be the opposite of death, but living isn’t.
