Serendipity (Pink Glow)
Serendipity is positive happenstance, a happy accident if you will. This photo was an accident and I am still not sure how I took it or of what object. It has the pink glow of something good occurring by chance I think.
Where the picture is what is what it says on the tin.
Where three things I happen to dig are together in one place.
A tad gloomy I suppose, but at least I’m happy…
It was a dismal weekday afternoon as we trekked towards Calton Hill in Edinburgh.
Then, joy of joys, just before our destination I saw some stone stairs leading up to a small cemetery.
Like a rat up a drainpipe, I quickly found my way to this vista, with looming castle battlements to ice the proverbial cake.
Victorian gothic nirvana!
I would have lingered, but my wife and daughter were less than impressed with another funereal photographic detour.
I rejoined them, and when we reached the top of the Hill, the drizzle became hard rain, forming waterfalls down the steps.
So wet, so grey…and I was so happy with it all.
Sometimes I wonder what the f**k is wrong with me.
Everybody wants to be happy, right? But you cannot be happy all the time.
Serenity is probably a more desirable and realistic place to inhabit as much as you can.
It connotes calmness and acceptance. Happiness may stem from serenity, but not necessarily.
I am drawn to water lilies as a symbol of serenity.
It’s probably why my first ever post, Water Lilies I ,had that subject. To be honest, I just dipped into my photo stash to find something to put up and figure out how to work this WordPress blog gig. But it was the thing that initially came to me, for whatever reason.
Here is another post of the circular, floating marvels: Water Lilies II
I love the way they sit over a fluid, shifting surface. Transcending their environs.
And not just floating, but flowering sometimes.
Beautiful flowers.
Serenity.
“A certain power of enduring boredom is essential to a happy life”
-Bertrand Russell
I can get easily bored. Like the boat lying on the mudflats at low tide, stasis can grip when there is no motion and there are no waves to ride .Sometimes the sameness of daily life palls. I suspect we all feel that way, maybe about completely different things.
But I have to recognise that life largely consists of boring bits; it cannot always be a highlights reel. Those places, people and things which can become overly familiar are also the very items that ground me in this life. We need to express gratitude for the mundane as well as the shooting star moments.
I am not saying that we do not need to change it up when we get stuck in a terminal rut, for that too is sometimes necessary .However,coping with boredom is actually a life skill in itself, like the art of conversation or apologising when we screw up. Developing a positive outlook and coping strategies for boredom are essential. Low tide times and desert experiences are inevitable. We do not necessarily need to seek more “stuff “or to busy ourselves just to alleviate boredom, but we are all guilty of that. Actually embracing the tedious or the just plain necessary will help get us through it. And,without boredom, we would not appreciate excitement when it arrives.
Just remember ,someone else would probably kill for your “boring”!
” Precisely the least, the softest , the lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment – a little makes the way of the best happiness.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Ebb Then Flood 