Facing the Day

There are times when I'd like to hide under my bed rather than face the day. It's when the inner amplification of my haunted thoughts is blaring loud, and fear and suffering take a front row seat. I call it the mental flu. It happens when moving from transmit energy to receive energy. At these times I am faced with a barrage of overwhelm and worry. I am trying to remind myself that I can deal and the days will brighten. They already have, and today I swam in the clear turquoise-tinted waters of the pool. While I was there I chatted with swimmers Don and Mary. Both are elderly, vibrant, devoted swimmers.

Mary, a former nurse, stepped out of the ladies room cautiously, assisted by her walker, and lowered herself into the pool at the ladder. She walked in the water, repeating a short path while lifting blue foam triangular barbell weights. Today the young lifeguard gave her goggles and she put them on. I teased her, saying that she looked like an aviator or a raccoon. She laughed and explained how amazing her vision is now that she's had her cataracts removed. She said colors had become more vivid, and she was now able to distinguish between violet and blue. She said she must have been wearing clashing colors before the eye surgery! Her reading and distance vision had improved too. I said now you can read lips from down the block! I told her I had read about a man who regained his sight after being blind most of his life, and how he now struggles with organizing the barrage of visual information. Maybe it's not unlike my overwhelming transition into receive energy, struggling to make sense of the incoming noise.

I asked Don about a mutual friend, and then he talked to me about how all his friends living in the nearby elderly apartments have slightly different living arrangements, appealing variously to each. By the time I left the pool I was filled up with the cheer of others and feeling pretty buoyant!