Blinded By the Light

The sun is shining so brightly I have to close my eyes.

Makes it hard to move through the day. I hear the recycling truck going down the street again. They used to drive down the street once, picking up from both sides of the street. Now they drive down the street twice, picking up from one side at a time. I don't understand this change. The guys who pick up the trash have started to do the same thing. I don't understand that change either.

There's a lot of change I don't understand.

I was watching something on television last night and a character said, "Nothing changes that doesn't have to." I'm not sure that's true, but I'm still chewing on it. I can see that sometimes it's true. Or, it could just be that I don't understand the ins and outs of the "have to's of change" in every situation. 

It also could be cascades of consequences.

Back to sunny days. The farmers market where I shop is today. I'm smiling just thinking about it. For the last month or six weeks, I've either been out of town on Thursdays or the weather has been less than ideal for walking around an outdoor market, so today feels like a real treat. In the evening, I teach a mindfulness class by Zoom. I'm looking forward to the time we can be back in person for that. There was a change that had to happen, like so much of the changes during Covid. It seems I'm thinking about them again today, and about how my patterns have changed so much in just one year. 

And I wonder, have I changed too? 

Or is it just the patterns than have changed? Do our patterns change us as well, or just our behaviors? Is there a difference? 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.