Acceptance

February 12, 2011

I am beginning to believe that feeling blessed is a matter of recognizing what is around you. Each time I step out of my mind momentarily and become aware of that which is surrounding me, I feel blessed. I use the word blessed because I do not have the vocabulary to use another word to encompass this feeling of happiness, luck, sacredness, separateness, and support.

When I become conscious again of what is around me, I see a sandy bucket that I need to fill with water by lifting a heavy 4.5 foot barrel that is half-filled (not half-empty because it’s heavy!) in order to wash my dirty dishes. I see ant-hills in my kitchen and a can of corn that will be lunch tomorrow. I see my single bed with a china-shop mattress that is sunk in the middle permanently from sleeping in it the first night. I see the plastic bag filled with clothes that need to be washed which looks like five loads to me, and my hands start to itch in anticipation of the soap exposure they will undertake when I wash the clothes later today. I see sand covering my floor, my feet, my bed, and I smell the stench of our urine pouring through the window in the adjacent room. I hear the flies buzzing around those puddles of pee that we regularly form in the ‘showering’ area outside that room. I feel the sweat dripping down the sides of my face and down my sternum. I also see the sun high in the sky, the same sun that makes me squint, browns my skin and fills my face with acne. The same sun that I scorn each day and avoid under umbrellas and trees is the sun that tells me that I have all day. The sun does not move fast here. It slowly moves from the horizontal line to the right, above the flat dry savannah until it reaches the same horizontal line to the left, while the colors of the sky respond by blending differently after each degree of change.

It isn’t the awareness of how easy life is that makes me feel blessed. It’s being cognizant that I want to be a part of it. It’s knowing that I am able; I am able to not only endure but to enjoy life’s tediousness, especially with others. This feeling of blessedness emanates from realizing how much I endorse being in the environment that I am in. I chose this life and every day I wake up and participate in it, I do so volitionally, willing to face the hardships that I know will come. Never have I felt so free.