I got out of college with a Master’s degree in 1984. The above picture is of the S&P 500, but it is also a history of my life. I remember where I was when these things happened and how I felt.
But also, I get to choose my thoughts now. I get to decide what I want to think about now. For sure, we can add Ukraine to the above chart, but I can add hope. Humanity grows and evolves. I grow and evolve. I can look forward to expansion. I can look forward to greater clarity and alignment with my Inner Being. For example, I got sober in 1985. My emotional and spiritual life has only grown since.
This upward trend is really my personal growth chart.
How am I spending my afternoon off? Nothing scheduled, no books being read? I am sitting here playing free cell on the computer and thinking of all the people I know, all the people I have ever known, all the people I have ever seen and maybe those I will never know. To each one, I think, “You are loved very much.”
I live in a complex, but the complex is surrounded on three sides by Missouri-style hay fields and scrub. A few weeks ago, coming home from work at 8 pm, I noticed a man walking on the sidewalk with a bag of groceries. I wondered where he was headed because he had passed the complex and he looked like he was carrying a bag of food. The next night, I noticed him again. A week later, I noticed the beginnings of a camp in the bushes near the entrance to the complex. A day or so later, I noticed more things added to the camp. Like I saw a full half-gallon of milk sitting on the ground, a tarp tied to bushes, a bag of apples hung on a bush, some clothing. There had been like a bedspread with something bundled inside laying in the bushes a mile away. Then the bundle disappeared from that place, and the bedspread could now be seen in the little camp.
All this to say that a homeless person had made a little camp to live in. I never saw exactly who was in the little camp but I suspect the man I had noticed. I wondered more about homeless people and I wondered what would happen to this one.
The camp disappeared a couple of days ago. All that remains is a path of trodden grass leading into the bushes. Dear homeless man, you are loved very much.
Ultra Monk's Essays 