These Tracks Forgot Themselves

For two years, they ran smoothly on a parallel course - railway tracks traveling to a single end-point. Each strong and independent, but each relying on and validating the other. Both deeply inter-dependent until infinity, or till one might cease its journey and make the other redundant. 

Then, one day, the tracks forgot themselves and tried to meet. One veered toward the other and the other bent closer in response, foolishly forgetting that railway tracks don’t join. In a flash: the familiar became strange, the comfortable became uneasy and the strong became weak. In a moment, they lost their joint purpose and laid the ground for a train wreck...

What can be salvaged now? Can the steel recover? Or did it bend beyond its yield point? Will this track break down? Or can it straighten out and find again the measured distance it must keep? Will the pain eventually morph to sadness? Can the sadness pass or be forgotten? Will they find again the peace and harmony they have lost?

“Many people think excitement is happiness… but when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy New Year

This year, I will live by the Lunar calendar and celebrate the start of the new year today. I will remove January 2019 from my life. The page is torn from my calendar. It never existed. It is gone forever – taking with it all the ugliness and pain and suffering that this blighted month inflicted.

The new year has already started in the East, allowing us all another chance to start anew. I will celebrate it, along with the Chinese, as the beginning of Spring: the season of rebirth and revival and rejuvenation. I will wash my hair and cleanse my body and decontaminate my mind – rinse out the grime and drain away the toxic.

I will make way for beauty and grace and lightness to enter my life again, as I start my year afresh. I will extend invitations to house guests, make time for loved ones, create space for laughter and revel in the comfort of friends. I will repair what has been eroded, glory in being myself once more and find my own light.

“There is nothing more rare nor more beautiful than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.” ~ Steve Maraboli