EWR Prosperity

 I see myself waking in the morning to the sunlight. I'm eager to start the day. I anticipate the aliveness that I will feel when I engage with my activities. I am centered, I know what I must do and I want to do it. 

I feel like I do when I gather and prepare my lunch and then sit in front of the computer to begin my daily crossword. I am relaxed and focused. There is no stress. I do not have to force myself to pay attention. I'm not distracted, my mind is alert and playing with the possibilities. What will I do first? Where will I begin? 

The work becomes more challenging. The easy part is over, the low hanging fruit has been harvested. Now the real fun begins. Can I puzzle through? Can I tease out the answers from the clues that had been cleverly placed in front of me? They are tough, ambivalent, ambiguous. I must let my mind unwind and not force things. The intrigue is pleasing to me. I want to figure out the answer, but the pleasure is in the not knowing, allowing my mind to work the soil. 

The answers come - at first the short ones and then the long ones, bursting forth as the letters form into phrases. Delight at the cleverness of the clues! 

And then the puzzle is solved. I'm happy but wish the feeling would continue, like finishing a book that has absorbed you and thrilled you. 

What's next?

***

JW: Such a rich metaphor ... and I hear echo's of Mary Oliver's The Journey:

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save.