A picture is a poem without words.
Horace
Mountain bluebird, Alberta (Daniel Ardnt, flickr creative commons)
I have been dealing with a great deal of stress lately. Some of it is related to the estrangement from my daughter and her father, some of it is related to my aging parents, and some of it is related to conflict with my sister, who is the main caregiver for my parents. Taken all together, I'm as close to burn-out as I've been in years. Some days, I feel like I'm going around in a daze: I can't think straight, I don't want to read, and some days I don't even want to leave the house. And, then, if I do manage to begin to feel better the phone rings and it's not good news or I phone my parents and they're not well . . . you get the picture.
First smile (Sean Drelinger, flickr creative commons)
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things that are good in my life. I am a thankful person by nature and by upbringing. I agree with Meister Eckhart who said, "If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is 'thank you,' that would suffice." And that brings me to my new way to support myself: Pinterest. In case you haven't heard about it, Pinterest is the newest, coolest (in my opinion) social media. It's a platform where you can go and store all the beautiful images you come across on the Internet or take yourself. You store images on Boards by "pinning them," thus, Pinterest. I've started 20 boards so far and I find the daily ritual of searching for beautiful pictures to be comforting. In fact, one of my latest Boards is called Comfort. I've filled this board with images that comfort me when I'm feeling stressed - which right now seems to be about 80 percent of the time! How can you look at the picture above of a baby's first smile (and it is the genuine first smile) and not see the beauty of life? Well, I can't.
I've also found calming images, like the one below of Kwan Yin (Guanyin), the Chinese bodhisattva, often referred to in English as the Goddess of Mercy. I could certainly use some mercy right now, as could my parents and my sister.
Kwan Yin, China (Victor Hu, flickr creative commons)
You can check out my other Boards here. I promise to return to writing more regularly here when I'm able. Hopefully, soon. Sometimes, however, words fail.
