Crying havoc and
Letting slip the dogs of war.
Where’s the fun in that?
Business is not all about work. I believe that we work to live, not live to work. So it is good, sometimes, to relax a little and take the pressure off ourselves. As part of that relaxation I like taking photographs and writing all sorts of material.
So I thought it would be fun to take some well-known quotations and give them a haiku/senryu twist.
Bright summer sunshine
Reflected in the flowers
Enhanced by the leaves
Contrasts come in all shapes, sizes, and colours, as well as other attributes like texture, smell, and so on.
There are also contrasts between humans. And sometimes these contrasts can cause conflicts due to the thought that one version is better or worse than the other.
But take these orange flowers. Would they be as bright without the green background? Would we notice the green if it wasn’t for the flowers? No. We need both to make the image worth looking at.
It may not be a great image. But it has contrasts that enhance each other rather than criticise each other. This contrast is interesting because the colours don’t come from directly opposite sides of the colour wheel, as we often try to achieve in art. No. They are both shades of the same colour – yellow. One has blue added, the other has red added. But they both use a common colour.
And when we see the commonality, the contrast becomes beautiful, rather than clashing.
It’s the same for people. We may have areas of contrast. But we are not from the opposite sides of the spectrum. Deep down inside, we all have something in common.
Just as the flowers need the leaves, and the leaves need the flowers to make each other beautiful, we all need each other to make each other beautiful.
Is there anything better than a cup of tea with a beautiful view in quiet, peaceful surroundings? Possibly. It depends on your point of view. But we all need to find somewhere, sometime, where we can just stop, let time stand still, and relax.
Grief can make you feel like all the roads are blocked, all the exits are barred. It can feel as if you have no direction, nowhere to go, nowhere to be but here, thinking of everything and thinking of nothing.
At such times, we need a way marker. We need a direction. We need to find a way through the barricades.
But only in our own time. When grief strikes, stop. Let it wash over you. Accept it for what it is. It’s an expression of love for the person we’ve lost. Take your time. Let no one rush you. Don’t kisten to those who would tell you that you should be over your grief, by now. There is no time limit.
Peace will come in your time, when you are ready.
Meanwhile, look for the signs. Look for the markers that say, “This is the way to your future.” They will appear. Sometimes, they’ve been there all along but our tears haven’t allowed us to see them. Sometimes they come along when we least expect it.
Eventually, though, we all have to make our own map. It’s not a map out of grief. It’s a map that acknowledges our grief, a map overlayed with grief. But like a landscape, shrouded in mist in which, little by little, the mist dissipates, very slowly, over time, as we keep putting one foot in front of the other, the grief, too, dissipates.
Maybe our grief will never go away. But it will fade, just enough for us to see the way forward.
Standing
Waiting
Longing for the time
When you return
And we can be
Together
Again
Greenacre 9 