Goodreads recently presented me
with this “quote of the day”:
My grandfather always said that
living is like licking honey off a thorn. (Louis
Adamic)
Wow.
Can I relate to that!
Book
#3 is well underway, though being away from it so much of the time has been a
challenge. On the other hand, it has given me the perspective of distance. I
can go back and read it much more objectively than I could have a few months
ago, so that gives me an edge for editing. This honey is on the thorn of little available
time.
There
have also been some recent life changes—people important to me who have left
this realm of existence. Death is always bittersweet. While I am certain of the
kingdoms to which they have gone and that they are absolutely joyous in those
places, I am also watching the effects their passing has on the people who love
them. My personal belief is in an amazing afterlife, so I don’t fear death; but
the fact is that the prolonged absence of loved ones is difficult to deal with,
whether the loved one has moved far away or has stepped through the veil of
this existence into the next. It helps me to focus on the fact that this
passage is one we will all make one day, and that the reception committee on
the other side will be glorious! Still, it’s honey on a thorn.
There
are a lot more thorns in life. If we try, we can find a little honey on most of
them. The trick is to keep our eyes wide open so that we know the danger, then
carefully approach the experience of licking the honey so that as little harm
is inflicted as possible. On the other hand, some thorns approach outside our
lines of vision and strike hard, wounding deeply. The sweetness of those
experiences can be hard to imagine, but if we study them hard enough, we can
find something. Often that “something” is the personal growth we can experience
if we (as the old expression goes) take those lemons and make lemonade.
The
sweet things in life are always tempered with the bitter. If they weren’t, we
wouldn’t understand how sweet the sweet things are, because we would have
nothing to compare them to! And if we’re really paying attention, sometimes we
can see the honey dripping off the thorns, so we can avoid most of the
nastiness and maximize the goodness.
