The cloudy day is her joy, for those passing white blossoms of the sky bring the transitory shade she loves. Upon the sidewalk she is as a happy butterfly beneath a tree canopy, passing from bright sun to mellow hues.
You only need a monetary system if you can't be bothered to explain to people why things really need doing... or to get them to do things that are really for the sole benefit of others... then it is a part of a manipulative rather than an honest system and will likely require fear and punishment to enforce - shaming those who don't work hard enough or abandon their children for long hours. When work is obviously beneficial to the world, to communities and families we love to take part, to volunteer and be helpful. We are, above all, a gregarious and social animal. We'll work for pizza and a feel good feeling... money not required, only love and honest reasons.
It is an endless canvas that colors are tossed upon. Some days it is a pure, uninterrupted blue that stretches seamlessly across my field of vision. When the sun rises, it is a child's painting, bright pinks and oranges piled on top of each other, reflecting off low hanging clouds and filling the world with a haze of wonder. When it storms, the harsh glow of lightning illuminates the gathering piles of dull grey clouds that are angrily pushing against each other. At night, the moon glows, giving the speckle of stars a guide light. The sky is alive, growing at each passing moment, a constant changing canvas for the world to see.
His eyes were green. The kind of green that pushed its way through the piles of gritty snow to remind you that spring was coming. The kind of green that budded on the prisoners of winter, bringing life back to their branches. That churning, passionate green that the ocean turns during a storm. That colour of the forest after it rains. The colour of the tadpoles making ripples in the pond. That green colour that brings hope and life no matter what has happened. And looking into those eyes, I could see it. And he knew that I could.
Good choices are made not on the journey, but in a moment, at a fork in the road. This is how the brain is; it is how we are. Forward motion comes best when the primitive drive and the higher social brain agree on a path. Let's say there is someone new in your life you would like to get to know better. Well, your primitive drive and social brain agree with each other, the social brain may wish to help them, show empathy and make a loving bond. The primitive brain may see them as a potential mate or ally in difficulty, yet the primitive brain is also ready to hurt them if they become threatening... and this happens regardless of our dominant conscious thoughts. You may have chosen to acknowledge only part of this reasoning, or all of it, or none of it, either way it is there. No choice has been made, it is all potential, as if you were driving down a road toward a fork and had made no choice as to which direction to take. The brain is ready to respond to the environment and chart a new course if necessary. The brain that can see though the lens of its own need and the lens of the needs of the other, open enough to make a loving bond yet able to close the door to the heart if there is emotional coldness from the other, is healthy. And this model of good choices comes up in everything we do.
We travel our road with all options open, yet over time our choices start to build a habitual preference for love or indifference, to bond or not, for acceptance or hostility, and this changes our brain development. So, how can we make more choices for empathy? Well, if we go back the driving down the road analogy, what is playing on your "radio"? What are your background thoughts? Do they hold you to a moral line, a predisposition to love and be kind? Do they excuse you for coldness and selfish behaviour? Are you playing the songs of love or selfishness? Because there is the balance between your higher social brain and your primitive drive. This is the point of choice.
A community of stones pave the way to the great house; though it is quite an ordinary size of dwelling. We call it such because of the history of the house, because of the great poetic words that penned within. Just to touch the stones to the soles of one's shoes is something electric, ordinary and extraordinary all at once.
Frost grew over the windows even as the duvet kept me warm. I watched the ice-crystals grow for a while, allowing my brain to be empty, content to exist and be. The morning would bring the beauty of the ice for sure, that crunch under boot and the bold greeting cold air brings. Yet between now and watching my breaths rise as new white-puffed clouds there will be a very cold night. The kind that only stops at the doors of the well-made houses.
The ground swerved into the narrow valley that was almost a gorge , it ran for around ten miles before sloping back up. From here we could see herds of cattle swarming through the narrow corridor of the valley and small shrubs growing on the sides. The forest had been the heart of this world but now we were in the soul. This was our freedom.
I started pedaling, inching toward my destination and enjoying the newly cool air. It was a lovely day, the first of all the days of spring, with crocuses and daisies in the neighbors garden, and white asters blooming all around. I didn't simply like nature, but rather I loved it. The trees and the flowers and the animals who lasted all around. Imagining all of nature destroyed would be like leaving my soul gasping for breath.
Massive amounts of wind are both music and the dance-floor for the clouds... vagrant, white and puffy as they are - playing and teasing with other clouds and moving freely in the sky as if they own freedom itself. Yet I wondered why at times they cry with fierce and sonorous thunder...
I went back to where it happened. I wanted to take away the power of the painful memory for hurt, prove to myself that I could choose to move on. So I took the one I love the most, my best friend, and on that spot we made a great memory, a happy one. Now when my brain goes back there I divert it only to the good memory, the healing one. It's as if I wrote a good story over the top of a bad story, and in time the ink of the bad story fades away until only the good one remains.
