As I was returning from an early morning errand today, I passed a street sign that I had never noticed before … Bliss Blvd. I looked at it with a kind of longing. That’s where I want to live. Wouldn’t you?
It’s a small side street and easy to miss as it comes up immediately after one turns left onto a well-travelled route, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant, that after all these years of passing it, I just noticed it today. I do always take these kinds of things as signs, and not the literal ones. So why did I just see this today?
From numerous nights of poor and/or interrupted sleep, I’m on edge. Things of minor importance become of disproportionate significance; routine but unexpected noises make me jump. And things that may normally cause me some worry cast an even greater shadow. I know sleep will help. But what I also know I need to do in these times is to just let go.
Letting go of worries often means letting go of the illusion of control. The only thing we truly have control over is our own thoughts. The rest – people, animals, events – on both personal and global scales – is nothing we can control. Sometimes we can only stand by and watch things unfold. Sometimes we can influence things in a positive, (or negative), way. However, others are on their own path, and we don’t ever really know, though we may glimpse it, what that path is for them – the joy, the pain, the confusion, the triumphs – but it is their path. Ideally, we can bring to others the best of ourselves and then let the rest go.
So, I thought today, in this sleep-fractured state, that I would pack up a little black bag of worries, control, fear and all that negative crap, and surrender it on my way to a more blissful destination. I’m sure there’s a better night’s sleep to be had there and an easier time of it. And I have children’s books to write and illustrate. I’m headed for Bliss Blvd. Isn’t that where you’d like to be, too?
Still A Dreamer 