all around us

at our community pool, i’ve seen a couple come and go with their little baby and all the baby accessories.  once we left at the same time, so we waved goodbye and i saw them pack everything into their blue SUV-thingie.  every time i drive by and see that blue SUV-thingie, i smile thinking of them swimming with their baby and carrying more than people without babies carry when going to the pool for the afternoon.  
 
nearly every morning around 10AM, a guy swims with his two dogs on the other side of the lake.  i can’t see him very well, so can’t guess his age and i don’t know who he is, but i’ve come to hope he and his dogs will be there whenever i realize it’s that time of day.  one dog is white and the other yellow (labs perhaps), and they love splashing and swimming around the guy – the water goes a-flying.  he tosses a stick and they all swim out toward it as if racing and laughing together.  i like that guy whoever he is; somehow he makes my day better than it was at 9:45.    
  
i know at least three friends who work in offices and read my blog, and i can picture each of them in their little spaces, working on the work they do (hello, hello!).  i like picturing them there; it comforts me to see them even when they’re far away or we haven’t spoken in a while.  
 
once i had a friend with a little photo of himself in his cubicle with pin pricks in it, he liked to throw pencils i guess.  he said, “me, the target.  but i don’t feel that way any more.”  he pulled it down and tossed it away.  i always meant to ask him about that, and wish i’d kept the picture – even if it was a really bad photo of him.  
 
maybe my friends in their offices are having a bad day today.  maybe their bosses are making them crazy.  maybe the library members, subcontractors, and authors are being demanding.  maybe today rather stinks in their life.  maybe that guy with his dogs has only one good half hour in the day, or maybe one day i won’t see him again.  maybe my old friend feels like a target again.  and still, somehow, both stranger and friend make my life richer just picturing them, wondering about them, praying for them, imagining their routine, thanking them for what they’ve given me, and even missing them terribly. 
 
my youngest son’s question keeps coming at me, “what is your greatest heart’s desire?”  i can come up with some pretty good-sounding spiritual answers – and i even mean them.  but then there’s my earthly answers, and self-sacrificing ones, the selfish, the horribly honest, and then my wonderfully honest answers, and i’ve just decided that i must have several hearts for all the desires within them.  
 
how can it possibly be this hard to live here on planet earth?  seems the older i get, the more complicated it becomes, and the less most of us see things as black and white but instead understand there are many layers and depths beyond our easy glance.  we understand better how people do the things they do, even if we don’t agree with them or ever want to walk such paths or just don't have such affinities.  but we get it.  we can see a hint of waywardness within ourselves or our own secret wishes and it heightens our compassion and understanding.  maybe that’s why.  maybe discovering deeper levels of compassion inside, desired needs of forgiveness, more substantial beauty in what we’d once pass on by – maybe that’s why it’s hard on ole planet earth.  
  
i don’t know.  i’m just thinking here.