Tags: volumen

Early mornings have a special gift for me. The break of dawn illuminates the invisible in what should be obvious: I can see that daily life is full of maintenance work. While that work is necessary, it often feels more like fixing things than living a simple, healthy, content baseline life. Yet I now suspect I may already have that life. I feel obligated, though, to chase the more complex ideal I was taught, an ideal that is not necessarily healthier or more fulfilling.

Life seems like an illusion in which we create both sorrow and happiness and keep cycling through them. We fall sick and recover. We gain and lose. Tangible things come and go. Emotions rise and fade. Responsibilities accumulate, more for others than for ourselves. Commitments follow, filling the day and then wrapping it up like paper around a box: sometimes like a gift, sometimes like a protective layer that hides us from others’ eyes. Boxes are everywhere. We declutter them, or we make new ones and keep rearranging them as life goes on.

Given life as we know it, it is sometimes hard to see the line that separates illusion from reality.