optimist lens

Isn't it crazy how the time change suddenly puts us into optimism gear? The canyon is a-buzz. Bees, early in the morning, humming. Huge crows everywhere. The swooping of red hawks. Dragon flies. And tiny birds, singing their little hearts out.

The slightest change in time makes me sleep horribly. The last two nights have found me up at 3am, but I'm giddy and can't wait to be out in the sunshine. Yesterday, for example, we had to go to a college reception in Santa Monica and sure enough, at five thirty, hundreds of people standing on the boardwalk taking iPhone pictures of the horizon, basking in the glorious SoCal sunset. Smiling faces, rosy-cheeked babies in strollers, lovers arm in arm, so much goodness in the world right now. So much to experience.

I think this stuff is deep in our DNA. My brother and my mother both suffer from it. My brother who lives in Scotland, high up in a purple, heathery glen, has a special SAD light in his kitchen which glows on him every morning when he makes the tea. My mother, a Norwegian, notices a distinct change in her being after December 21st. Somehow when the days start getting longer, her outlook on life becomes more sunny. And it's the same with me. I more or less hibernate during the wintery months, even though I'm in Los Angeles, but the yellow mimosa and the wild strawberries and the purple wisteria which appear at the beginning of March suddenly takes all the fear out of the world.

This is a theme, here, I know:
Fear or Love.
I choose love, yes, because I'm a hippy. Yes, because I want to believe in magical things. Yes, because I'm a fan of Ken Kesey and Aldous Huxley et al, and have glimpsed, momentarily the connectedness of all things (oh I know, that sounds hideously smug, and I say it with a smile -- it's always round the corner, just far enough to keep striving for) but also because life is better when you look at through the lens of love.

So, here's what I mean. I don't mean love as in romantic love, although that is  something else that changes one's perspective, I mean love as in God is Love. Let me explain. We get caught up in the Judaeo/Christian notion of the vengeful God, the keep-the-people-in-their-place God, the old guy with the beard who judges us God, and I disagree with all of it. As far as I can tell, as far as I believe (and I believe everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and/or whatever works for them) God is another word for Love. And Love is another word for the universal energy that connects us all. It's the brilliant, infinite, beautiful mathematical formula that ties it all together. The oceans, the tides, the seasons, the moon, the circles of life and death and rebirth. The chance meetings that change lives. The exquisite beauty of nature. The perfection of music. The soft sweetness of the first warm breeze of summer.


p.s. I can just see the faces of my English friends reading this, rolling their eyes and thinking "Uh-oh, she's clearly been in Los Angeles too long!"