I've spent so much time wondering why. Why did things go this way rather than that? Why a left and not a right? Why is the grass green and not purple? Could it have been different? Should it have been? Just a rocky pile of answerless questions that I pick up and lug around in the back of my mind.
I was driving today, just mundane driving to some random event, and the sun was shining in just the right way with the perfect cascade of light drenching the river in sparkly warmth. And I was suddenly overcome. I realized in that moment that I simply cannot hold it all. All the brightness, all the shine, the fecund earth oozing with light and sparkle at every turn. I'm too small. I can't hold all of the beauty and life and possibility. There are too many experiences to live, too many glimmers of hope to see out of my periphery, too many sideways grins to catch, too many clouds that morph into unicorns when no one is paying attention, too much divine seeping through every little mundane nook and cranny. I can never possibly see every dandelion that pushes its yellow ball of sunshine through impossible cement. Or witness every acorn rooting down, sprouting life in rotting gutters. There are too many pebble teeth peeping through pain in defiant laughter. There is too much. I cannot hold it all.
I cannot hold it all. However, somehow, when I let go of all of the questions, the doubt, the confusion, there is more space. When I drop the rocky whys, there is room for a bit more glimmer, a tad more sparkle. We will never know why. We cannot know. We are not capable of holding it all. We can only hold what we choose to see, and pick up, and drop into our hidden and tiny pockets. There is room for only so many stones. I guess it's simply a matter of deciding which ones belong in our collection.
