Or WinSomeLuzSome.com, as one clever person suggested as the new name for my blog.
But this post is not about the new name for my blog. That is still under deliberation. Honestly, I didn’t give this much thought to either of my children’s names.
This post is about the yin-yangy nature, the wobbly nature, if you will, of life. Of my life, anyway.
Last week I got an emailed notice of blog eviction. This week I got an emailed notice that I won an iPad. Last week I was searching the yellow pages for boarding schools for one of my beloved children. This week at parent teacher conferences, the same child was called a model student.
During this swell of good fortune, Roger and I went to a schmooze-fest last night at a local hotel, which was trying to court some meeting business. We were given raffle tickets at the door. Toward the end of the evening, his number was called — he won lunch for two at the hotel restaurant. Sa-weet!
Lightning couldn’t strike twice, right? Especially since I had already won an iPad earlier that day. But with the last door prize, my number was called. I won beaucoup points with the hotel chain, enough for a weekend away.
If I were a betting person, I’d buy a lottery ticket. But I’m not. I know not to get caught in the swell. Either the “good” swell (“swell” swell?) or the “bad” swell.
(I use the word “swell” because when I look at the line dividing the dualities of black and white, it’s in the shape of a wave.)
People say of the weather in Colorado, of the weather in Cleveland, of the weather in Vancouver and Melbourne and Geneva, that if you don’t like it, wait 10 minutes.
Perhaps this impermanence applies to life in general. The key, then, is to be rooted so firmly into your essence, your true, divine nature, that you are not swayed or broken by the stories that swirl around you, neither the “happy” ones nor the “sad.”
Years ago, I first heard of a practice Tibetan monks have of painstakingly painting mandalas out of grains of sand. Over the course of six or seven days, a team of monks will place grains of sand, one by one, into their work of art. By the time they are finished, they have a true, one-of-a-kind masterpiece.
And then they blow or brush it away.
The last part of their practice deeply offended me. How dare they destroy something that brings joy to people. How could they? Why so destructive?
But now, I am coming to understand. Creating and destroying. Winning and losing. Being happy and being sad.There is an ebb and flow to nature, to our own beingness, that makes life so exquisitely meaningful and whole. Half a tao symbol looks like, well only half of something. When we pursue only part of life and try to resist the other, we are not whole.
The monks demonstrate non-attachment to what they create. And soon I will say goodbye to Weebles Wobblog, my constant companion of the past 5 years. I will be sad.
And then I will renew.
As for my recent good fortune? This, too, shall pass. And I’m OK with that.