I went to Butchart Gardens in Victoria on Sunday. It's a place I haven't been in at least 10 years and I have to say, it is one of the most lusciously beautiful places I have ever witnessed. It's as if you expect to come upon Adam and Eve and an apple tree; as if you have been transported back to some naturally beautiful beginnings of perfection.
To think that someone rejuvenate an old quarry into such an abundant natural space of beauty and to think of what that person would think if they saw it now; the huge business it has become, can't help but bring a smile to one's face.
Today has been weird. It was a day that did not bring the intended results and of course the questions I have about the real reasons behind that decision exist in balance with the acceptance that I will never have the real answers to that question.
I have enough faith to know that whatever unfolds in one's life is meant to be. There's no point in questioning it. By the time you have lived, really lived, you know if you are wise and have lived through enough challenges to see the other side that what unfolds is unfolding exactly as it is meant to be. The journey that you are on, is a journey that is perfect in all its disappointments and its surprises and so, in spite of any surface level disappointment, inside, deeper, where the truth lives, you know that acceptance and faith is the only belief system that contains any wisdom. I know that I will have an experience with those people whom I am meant to for reasons that are bigger than myself and I won't with those when we have no lessons to learn from each other. It's so incredibly simple really.
But, today, as too often in the past year, I have thought so much about a man I used to love and I think that author Mitch Albom was so right in his book, For One More Day. I would give so much to be able to spend just one afternoon with this person in conversation the way we used to knowing what I now know, living the way I now live, understanding that it isn't as easy to change the way we are as we get older and how that will either work against us or for us, for better or worse. But, alas, parting again would be even more unbearable so it's just as well it's not possible.
Sometimes it is a curse to be anything other than "the norm", the mainstream, the typical. I often wonder what life would have been like to be what was expected of me; to be on the inside what I appear to be on the outside.
And you?
