mind's eye





Greg has just got home from spending a couple of days with some very sad people. People who have lost hope. People who have traded joy and love and laughter for stilted formality and a grey and sterile existence.

It is so frustrating and debilitating to be with people like that and I want to scream in anger and grief at the thought of what life must be like for them.

I have lived with depression and loss and pain and I know what it is to feel the loneliness that gnaws away at your soul, but I have always had that (sometimes tiny) spark of hope that makes me believe that things can, and will be better.

They don't seem to have even that... all they are left with is the mind-numbing sameness that comes when you are existing rather than living.

The picture above is of Greg on the station in Rome as we waited to catch a train to Venice a couple of weeks ago. I love the thakka, thakka thakka of the arrivals and departure boards, and that exciting feeling that "we could just go anywhere".

We speak no Italian, and working out which train to catch and how to buy the tickets was a bit of a challenge. But it didn't matter... if we were on the wrong train we could change course and get the right one.
And without meaning to sound like we have all the answers I think that attitude is part of the reason that we see life as an adventure, whereas the people that Greg just visited just don't seem to see it like that.

I wish I could take them with me send them to Florence, where maybe their souls would learn to sing. (Because they are so miserable, to be honest I'd rather send them than take them and be dragged down by their negativity).

Maybe, if the art in the galleries and churches did not smash through the crust of despair, they would wake up if they saw the work of the street artists.



Work of such exquisite beauty, laid over a dusty, oily road.


And maybe ... just maybe... if they saw it a day later, washed away by the rain, they would realise that we must make the most of every precious moment while embracing life with open hands... ready to let go of the things of the past.

Prepared to start afresh, kitted out for the next step on the big adventure. And more than that... more than being ready, to actually start putting one foot in front of the other and finding their way to somewhere altogether new and wonderful.



Comments

Ginny said…
Eish Lynne - sometimes you get the half-empty glass people and there is nothing you can do to top them up. Am sure if you sent them to Italy the weather would be crap, the people would be unfriendly and the streets would be full of nasty graffiti! The thing is always not to let them drag us down! But it's awesome that you care.
23 December 2010 at 10:45
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