What I remember most
about this particular day is that
nothing seemed to fit.
The morning arrived too early.
I overcame that, but when I arrived at work
I was given a new assignment:
a knotty one, which was impossibly
uneasy and awkward.
It was a task for which I had no inspiration,
something I plain didn't want to do.
And everyone in the office seemed sour,
as though they had overdosed on lemonade.
I did close my eyes briefly
in an attempt to remember
they were holy creatures,
but it was a cursory overture.
When I opened my eyes people were still
futzing around in an unhappy way
and the harmony was, well, absent.
I began doing the unfortunate assigment,
sighing heavily the way people do
when they are certain that happiness
is an entirely alien concept.
By lunch I was ready for help.
I took my cafeteria tray outside,
found a bench under a tree,
and sat there alone,
watching a troop of high-energy ants
march meaningfully along a cement curb.
I noticed that to an ant,
nearly everything is an obstacle.
After all, they're miniscule.
My spot under the tree was very peaceful,
rich with inspiration and hope,
and eventually I began to wonder
why I had spent all morning
looking at life with such small eyes.
I thought, look at this!
when the ego is in play,
our vision is as small as ant eyes
staring at pebbles
and seeing boulders.
That's exactly what I had been doing:
staring at pebbles and seeing boulders.
So I closed my eyes and remembered
that the bench, the tree, the ants,
the day, the office, the work
were not outside of me,
instead -- they were elements
contained in my infinite self.
I decided to accept them as innocent.
When I went back upstairs to my desk,
I was wearing different eyes:
no judging, no blaming,
no searching for molehills
to make into mountains.
No peering at events through a frown.
No squinting.
It is a far, far easier way to look at things.
As I removed the strictures from my seeing,
everything around me seemed to sigh and relax
and settle into a cool, easy pace.
Later that afternoon,
someone in our group decided on a whim
to go get ice cream for everyone.
So towards the end of the day,
there we all were,
scooping out heaping platefuls
of ice cold inspiration,
joshing and kidding around
as though we were all 12
and it was recess.
I thanked the ants for the lesson.