Smidge of a Rainbow – Photo: L. Weikel

A Smidge of Hope

We all know it’s the little things. It’s the little things that push us over the edge. It’s the little things that can trigger road rage and make us go from pleasant to demented in two seconds flat.

It’s the little things that make life worth living.

It’s the little things, sometimes, that serve to bring a smile to our face just in time to shift whatever barometer we have within us to perceiving life as reflecting a rainbow rather than embodying a fogbank or a massive cloudburst.

There’s a big difference between those three ‘weather events’ and how they impact us (especially if we’re taking a walk when experiencing them). And sometimes it’s hard to perceive whether we’re impacting the weather or it’s impacting us. Are we the chicken? Or are we the egg?

Yikes. I’m all over the place tonight.

It’s stemming at least partly from the photo I want to ‘feature’ tonight (which I’d hoped to post last night, but we all know how well that went).

A Smidge of a Rainbow

I took tonight’s photo (above) last night as Karl and I traversed the ‘walkabout’ with Spartacus and Sheila  (The ‘walkabout’ is the ~4 mile route we routinely take, as opposed to the ‘walk-around,’ which is 2.1 miles.)

I was tired when we walked last night. And feeling some uneasiness over the state of the world. (Oh wow, how ridiculous is that? ‘Some uneasiness?’ The banality of that statement is laughable.) But it’s true. Karl and I were both just sort of skating along on the surface. We even commented on how sort of ‘stuck in neutral’ we’re both feeling  – paying attention to what’s going on in the world but trying our best not to get ‘hooked’ into any of it.

That’s hard.

We made a point of not digging too deeply into the specifics. We kept changing the subject, because we knew how easily we could become mired in misery.

I’m not going to recite what was (and is) going on ‘out there.’ Most of you, I suspect (with a few notable exceptions – and you know who you are!) are committed to remaining informed and many of you are activists, or you at least try to make a difference where you can. So whether our awareness of the current atrocities and outrages being visited upon our fellow Earth brothers and sisters (and Mother Earth herself) is conscious or not, we’re still picking up on the overall energy ‘out there.’ And it’s devolving.

As a result, as our mothers taught us, if we can’t say anything nice, we don’t say anything at all. Unsurprisingly, then, a good portion of our walks lately have been in silence.

A Smidge of Love

So imagine my delight when I looked up at the sky – with no (truly, zero) expectation of seeing anything out of the ordinary – and caught sight of that smidgen of a rainbow.

It felt like an unexpected hug. No, it wasn’t some two page spread of a Technicolor spectacle. But neither was it a mere ‘rainbow dog.’ (And let me be clear: I’m not disparaging rainbow dogs. But you have to admit, they’re usually quite tiny.) It was real; it was unexpected; and it was a ray of hope. It made me smile, inside and out. It shifted my energy and kicked my perspective up a notch or two.

So of course, what was the first thing out of my mouth when I saw it? “I need to try to capture that!” I declared. “I want to share it tonight.”

We need each other. We need to give – and be – smidgens of rainbows for each other: Sharing unexpected smiles. Knowing, compassionate glances. Generous laughter.

Quick hugs, too – even if it’s just with our eyes or our words. Because it’s important, especially now, to know in our bones that we’re not alone, and that love will prevail.

(T-821)