Natures Cottage

It’s funny how life’s best lessons can be learned not in classrooms – not in the most expensive, most prestigous universities.. but right in our much-loved play grounds…

In life…
sometimes you’re up. Everything’s going well, going great! Nothing could be better… or – if things could be better- at least it’s all going quite well as it is.

Then, sometimes, you’re down.
When nothing’s going right. Everything just seems to be getting worse and worse and you’re thinking, “How could anything get any worse?” But they do. But, have faith, have patience.. soon you’ll be up again.. but then, don’t get your hopes too high. Every now and then you’ll have your downs too, and it’s just the way life is.

We all look for stability and peace, and it’s in a whole nother realm we can find that peace – that happiness, which is so deep that no ups or downs could possibly affect it.. it’s a place, once you go to- will give you the foundation and fulfillment you look for, so that the ups and downs that we inevitably experience in this world will not affect us any more than the passing clouds in the sky affect us. And there we’ll find rest.

What exactly is this world coming too? I work with about 5 people who have absolutely no life. They work all week so they can spend it all on alcohol and drugs. They don’t even like the work they do. They have absolutely no appreciation at all for nature or  the environment. They  are just totally locked into their little world. So many people are like that that I know. They are totally destroying their bodies with the toxins they throw into it everyday. I can smell the toxins on them everyday they come to work. It’s oozing out of them. I wish I could just slap them and tell them to wake up haha.   A few of them are actually really nice people but they just have no purpose for their life. Work, drugs and fishing is about it haha. I’m not trying to criticize them and put them down. They are free to do whatever they want but I would hate to live my live and then look back on it and think “damn, I lived for nothing”.

Days are good in a sense that each day we’ve each got the choice to change.  Each day we’ve got a choice to make things better, keep them about the same, or make them worse.  I’m happy to have the chance to make things right after making so many wrongs, and I’m happy to have the guidance of family and friends which pushes me and makes me want to do better all the time.

The years have gone by so quickly.  It seems only just yesterday that I was a 12 year old, much affected by the influx of puberty, wanting friends, and wanting so much to be accepted.  Now, 10 years later, I’m still studying, but I’m also a teacher to many now.  It’s hard to believe my mom was a mom at this age.

Things change so much, and people change so much all the time.  The beautiful ocean is a great reminder of this.  From a young age I loved water, I loved the ocean- and it’s only in the past few years that I’ve finally lived right by it.  I just got back from a swim and it was so beautiful and clean out there- and no shark sightings again – so it was good.

As that saying goes, “the ocean of ever change” – ah, it’s so true.  Yet despite its changing all the time, in a sense it’s somehow calm.  I seem to find a sense of calmness in the ocean, a kind acceptance of its sometimes cruel, crashing waves- which on other days is so calm and unmoving that it seems to be more like a lake than the ocean.  Calmness.  Beauty.  Water is so powerful.  Nature is so full of beauty, splendor, wonder.  Yet not a speck of nature crows of arrogance.  It is all just like a manifestation of Supreme Beauty and Supreme Acceptance.