Anti-Assertivness

Three young men jog by, tight blue running suits, and one bounding furry dog. Fog hangs in the trees, the rain splashes on the lake ice, covers it, spills off the edge into the water, wavelets contained in a curious open section near the shore – the shape of lips. I take a deep breath of the morning air. My spiritual life is before me, wet after a cold snap the ice keeping the surface glassy, but the edges rippling.

Spring is a cardinal and they don’t migrate here, in fact I only know about them from hear-say. Instead I look for beauty in the birds who do visit our feeder; these familiar juncos, these common sparrows. I know it can not be so, but the weather even seems to reflect my mood. I don’t believe that we create our own reality.

Perhaps there is a reality of which both I and the trees agree, perhaps the dog bounding by imagines joy from dawn to dusk. Perhaps the ice melting here is less important than the insight it triggers, a random event vectoring my life, perhaps if the ice had grown thicker, some other insight would have formed. We are weak fragile creatures, strong in our weakness, robust in our fragility. If I choose not to be assertive will life return me courtesy?