Strange Gift??

A friend asked me quite a while back to write something for a blogazine on what it's like to have Parkinson's Disease. I have been thinking about it since then. I could discuss the physical side of it....but that is only one level.

 For me, perhaps, one of the greatest impacts it comes with is the desire to look much more closely at day to day life, to understand on a deeper level what life is/can be about. We spend so much time focused on things outside of ourself, the goings on around us, money concerns, how we look, etc.

Becoming ill somehow forced me into the position, a seemingly urgent position at first, of trying to understand...."Why?" Why me, why this, why that? And there were never any answers. But there was something I felt, below the surface. To the other questions --Why are we here? What is our/my purpose? How do I want to live the remaining years of my life? What is most important to me in terms of my focus? There were no obvious answers that seemed to solidify.

 My therapist and I gave me permission to ski much more...which may seem trivial and self-centered. But there is actually some form of communication between Mother Nature/Heaven & Earth, the world beneath the surface and I when I am in the mountains. It's difficult to verbalize - the feeling of interacting with the forces of nature - gravity, also fear--trying to look it in the eye, somehow trying to come to know myself and the Earth better simply by being more present in each moment.

 Shortly after leaving work, I started to spontaneously write poetry (never mind whether it was any good). But the words come from the subconscious, as though taking dictation. They come from somewhere other than the mind. 

It is this place of instinct from which art, in general, comes I think. There is a beauty/poetry in seeing the relationship between forms and lines and taking a photo, for example. You may have no idea why you just snapped that shot...it's not conventional....but there is some feeling of flow, of a beauty beyond the power of words --some form of common force in the world----trying to harmonize with other forces.

It is this force that seems to me to be at the center of the answers that I seek. And I think it somehow fundamentally comes down to love (love of the Earth, of animals, of our common humanity, of each other in all our glowing and less than wonderful moments).

 As Henri Cartier-Bresson says, we are simultaneously living and dying. Nothing is static; nothing is permanent. Each fleeting moment carries all of life within it and it can never be re-lived.

What will we choose to do with each of these moments? What will we spend each of these moments focused on--earning a living perhaps, doing all of the daily tasks of living -- yes, of course, but perhaps guided by the "flow" (the "force??") of love/life that permeates every molecule of Earth and its inhabitants.....or perhaps at least trying to better understand that "flow".

 I think I have come to believe that the underlying purpose of life is the expression of love......for ourselves, for each other, for the Earth (our home) and all of its creatures. That is the theory, for now at least, that instinctively fits and feels best for me. If I could live the rest of my life devoted to trying to be true to that approach, I would feel that becoming ill and coming to that realization was perhaps one of the greatest gifts ever given to me.  As always, that's much easier said than actually done.