Light and shadow

A day graced by three messages that give me a lot of pleasure.
They evoke warm memories, all the more so with today's fine weather. The long shadows pattern the road as I drive up to the village once more, and no doubt even they contribute to this nostalgia.

Tapering clouds fly gloriously across the sky. They always seem to express time sweeping by. And the shadows make one think of those in life. But there are no regrets. Light also determines shadows, as life also determines death.

Could it be the Scottish heritage, the Highland common sense that helps us to avoid the obstacles that can so easily complicate life, testing enough in itself already? If so, I must be one of the lucky ones. A family is truly blest if when confronted with a totally unanticipated and tragic situation, it can settle everything within a few hours, without the slightest problem, as if the parents were still there, looking down upon their children, laughing as they so often did when the family were all together, and gently guiding them.

Whereas much gloomier shadows seem to cast themselves upon others. One finally reaches the conclusion that certain negative situations have been virtually programmed from the start. As if in spite of what one is convinced to be the best advice and help that one can try to offer at the best possible time, nothing can alter what seems to be a predestined fatality. The problem, an endless family feud, seems irresolvable.

Such a tragedy would have inspired Shakespeare. The characters of the play don't need any further emphasis. Even as they actually are, they might appear to be caricatured. There is, as referred to once before, a terrible similarity with Shakespeare's 'King Lear' and the folly of vanity. When, before the final curtain, the futility is sadly revealed, in all its desolate, hopeless and worthless misery, then one is also fully aware of the horror of it all.

If one believes, without any regret whatsoever, to have given the best years of one's life, in helping to keep such a location going, and to make it and it's immediate surroundings more beautiful, such a consequence can only bring sad resignation. Not in as much as one's personal efforts carried out with love and dedication also seem destined to come to such a tragic end, because no one can ever take away the satisfaction that one had in accomplishing them, whatever the final consequences. The sadness comes from the knowledge that one's children risk to inherit the same problem, or that they, and particularly one's own of course, will never benefit at the best possible period of their lives, also from one's own efforts. And that such a location that should always have been lovingly cared for and generally appreciated as an Eden, seems irrevocably fated to end up as a lonely lieu of interminable dissent.

Such were the thoughts that past through my mind today.
Despite whatever one has to contend with, life is always beautiful. I like to think that if you sincerely believe this, then life itself will smile back at you. You get what you give, in love and in war.
So one must accept the shadow that comes with the light. They are inseparable. Together they are beautiful. They determine each other and everything else in every way.

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Text and images © Mirino, January, 2014