You don't have a choice from where you aren't

That's the small print.

Choice is always only as wide, or narrow, as the radius you give yourself.

For example - what image do I choose to accompany this post? A photo of a fork in the road? A deliberating human head with their chin in their hand? A cartoon face with question marks over it?

No.

None of the above-mentioned images come naturally to me, as companions to my theme. I aren't there, so to speak.

This glass egg, however, was right under my nose on my desk. I could pick it up and snap it with my phone. It caught the light as I could never have predicted.

And so, a post, which began with but a solitary sentence, unfolded richly into its immediate surroundings to share with you.

Yes, there is now. But also - don't underestimate the power of right here: where YOU ARE.

 

Gratitude and your own, mad song

In what were probably some of the darkest times of my adult existence, I was obliged frequently to sojourn in the Eastern Cape frontier town, Grahamstown (privately and helpfully nicknamed Grimsberg during those years).

When in Grimsberg, I must do shopping.

I used to go to a little complex, called Peppergrove Mall. The front of the Pick 'n Pay there is roofed, and a part of the area is marked, by a railing, containing shopping trolleys. There used to be a slender, youngish man there, who wiped the handles of the trolleys for each customer, with sanitising wipes, which he nimbly reached over to pull out of a bucket with a hole in the top.

Not only did the man's helpfulness make the act of extracting a wipe, and sanitising my own trolley handle, unnecessary for me to do. He also wiped my grimy soul, by filling me each time with wonder.

For, on each occasion, without fail, when I fetched a trolley and greeted him, and asked him how he was, he would reply -

"I am alive! I am so grateful to God that I have today, and that is why I am happy!"

His fervour never waned, his line never changed.

When circumstances altered, and I no longer needed to frequent Grimsberg, I made a point of going especially to thank him for so liberally tossing his good cheer into my days. I am not sure that he recognised me, for I had not been coming to the town regularly anymore, and he looked, perhaps, a little nonplussed.

"You made a difference to my life," I told him, "it was a difficult time for me, and your thankfulness for being alive always meant so much."

I did not get the impression that my thanks made a difference to him. I don't think he needed it.

I never bothered to find out his name, or to make conversation with him - he did not exactly open himself up to conversation - and so, other feelings, which I could have had, such as pity for his station; or guilt and shame about the differences between us; or worry about his well-being - none of those feelings stood a chance with him.

Here was a king, as the German folk round sings it -

Froh zu sein bedarf es wenig                                        To be happy one needs very few things
und wer froh ist, ist ein Koenig.                                    and the one who is happy is a king.

One sees many memes, which highly recommend the trolley-handle-wiper's attitude of gratitude in practice. But you have to be wild to do it - wild enough to know your life can be snatched from you at any moment, wild enough to know that all you have is NOW; wild enough to be mad enough to sing your song as wholeheartedly and as wholesomely as you possibly can. And thus, the trolley-handle-wiper's song is humbling and no doubt an example for all to follow.

Hah, and there's the rub!
YOUR song is not the trolley-handle-wiper's song.
Your song is NOT the song of A.A. Milne or Piglet or Pooh Bear in the accompanying, famous illustration below.

Personally, I would have to exercise brute force on myself in order to do for somebody else what that lovely youngish man did for me. The sheer horror of having to tell myself (never mind somebody else) daily that I am happy to be alive is enough for instantaneous gloom to pour itself out within me and spread depression diligently through my system over the next five weeks. Why? Because I would be forcing myself to do something utterly monotonous to my spirit - the words would not spring up naturally out of my heart as they did out of his.

I surprise myself over and again by how fluid I am: how, not seldom, the cornucopia of disappointments and sorrows, which my life has generously granted, seem far too heavy for me to carry. Despite the fact that I am richly blessed with joys AND am grateful for them, I flop UNGRATEFULLY like wet clay back into default position, i.e. flat dust, which not even the wind can whip into a prettty storm, because this thing is way too waterlogged.

That is the moment when you become grateful for tears. Or just for honesty. Or for the teeth you're gritting all over again. And, at last, you really do resolve to make that appointment with the dentist. Tomorrow.

Photo acknowledgment: Saeed Al Jafar from Kuwait in the Masai Mara, Kenya. 'The end of a cheetah yawn'.

Paradiso - a chosen boundary

In order to maintain perspective (stay grounded) during the build-up to my book launch, I decided to volunteer as a guide on the garden tours over the recent Spring Festival in Hogsback.

I received a morning's training from experienced guides, who included a retired professor of Botany. I was introduced to the lilt of new words - Lyriodendron (for the primitive Tulip tree); Karumi (the Japanese azalea); Tilopia (previously Warrister - for a remarkable Australian protea).

The unknown inevitably visits upon you foreign vocabulary, for you to get your tongue around, extending the horizons of your imagination, both inward and out. But known vocab, too, has hidden crannies.

Etymologically speaking, Paradiso is 'a royal, enclosed park'. A place of safety, a haven: boundaried, a space, which by definition defends your peace.

Biblically speaking, however, it is a place of temptation: a place that offers you the privilege of choice.

Paradiso is, in the Christian heritage, the earth - whose plants and creatures we can choose to care for, such that we may serve thereby the survival and health of our bodies and souls. Or not.

Many have chosen to leave the place of peace. Individuals such as I marked in my previous blog, who transgress against the principle of loving care, are a case in point.

Many, however, have chosen to say yes, to take responsibility. It has been my privilege to walk through the living stories of labouring love, which Hogsback's show gardens are witness to.

My very own graffiti wall - a pair of poems on pity