Earth Day

Easter tables all over the Northeast held brilliant bouquets pronouncing the return of Spring. Ours was picked with care and brought much delight to all who circled around. Truly, an easy delight for any and all after months of a black and white landscape. Today there is yellow and orange, pink and red and all those in between hues of daffodil, tulip and ranunculus in every stage of bloom. Today is the start of a world overcome by this joyous return.

Every year on April 22, Earth Day is celebrated by 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. It marks the anniversary of the beginning of the modern environmental movement that started in 1970, but is also a day to show support for the Earth and raise awareness of environmental issues,” says Google. As I stroll through gardens bursting with Spring it seems the least we can do is support this beautiful planet that has given us so very much, our every nourishment in fact. Today I am drinking in all those rich gifts.

Is there anything more spectacular than finding purple and green where yesterday there was only brown and gray? I find myself drawn like a bee just going from flower to flower to nourish me after this long winter. Eye candy. Sweet delight. All for free to gaze.

#investinourplanet is the Earth Day 2022 theme. How simple to hashtag a concept, yet so difficult to shift a world bent on destruction. Today I focus on all the easy beauty. So very grateful that it is indeed as easy as blooms on the trees and along the garden paths. How fortunate we have been for so many decades, millenniums even. Perhaps not so for those who will come after us, but for this day, with the blue sky, the fat robin hopping along the lawn, and the buzz of the bee chasing down each bloom, I will rejoice on this Earth Day.

And take in all She has gifted us. What a treasure to watch each April, life resurfacing like a goddess from the Underworld, this Persephone made visible, this hope realized once more.

 

There is a Light Coming

The bees are buzzing the apple blossoms, the dandelions brightening the open fields with their yellow sunny faces, and the air is filled with a delicate intoxicant. Spring is bursting with hope and promise as we await the whole of our world to open back thanks to the vaccinations being administered to all. What a miracle and promise after this dark year! I know there are many hardships still all about the globe, and my heart is breaking for all the suffering where people still languish. [Please take a moment to do what you can to ease someone’s struggle today]. I understand my privilege to walk under blue skies and, for this brief moment, I invite you to stroll along and take in the wondrous beauty in my small world.

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“Languishing” they call It

It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.

As scientists and physicians work to treat and cure the physical symptoms of long-haul Covid, many people are struggling with the emotional long-haul of the pandemic. It hit some of us unprepared as the intense fear and grief of last year faded” (Grant).

Last week, everyone read The New York Times article, everyone nodded a yes, and I too thought, this is exactly what I am feeling after this past year. Before I read the piece, I had coined the sense as ‘mopey’. Just that downcast and defeated feeling after a hard year of cynicism and despair might leave you moping around your living room. 

 

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