The Stare

" In silent night when rest I took
For sorrow near I did not look
I wakened was with thund'ring noise
And Piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.."


( from: Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666: Anne Bradstreet)
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Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.
( The first of the 4 Noble Truths which Buddha taught was "Life is Suffering".)

It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.


M. Scott Peck worded it clearly but the principle isn't new. All manners of faith speak on suffering and what one must do when confronted by it. Such powerful words to be read...giving internal power and resolve to stand strong when crises hits...only of course tragedy visits without prior notice...at times with such merciless viciouness that leaves one no space to gather the strength of all learned affirmations stored somewhere within one's soul.

Evil has visited my island. Not its footman or right hand...but Evil itself. Dressed in shreds of tattered hope and faithless seams...it gleefully tap danced in a prime area where innocent people converge....in an area where my family and I frequently stroll..


Nobody had the faintest notion that Evil was in town....We merely view its presence in our glowing plasma screens and internet connections...so remotedly far flung from our little city island air conditioned shopping malls....It wouldn't bother us here...We are too insignificant.

Ah' what small foolish whimpering manner of thinking!....

The flame and fury I wrote off a post down has unmistakably flashed it's toothless blood smeared grin over my city and left death and destruction and fear in all our hearts....

Safe within the confines of my home..I view the swaying leaves of my mango tree...I feel the coolness of the breeze as it alights on my skin...The birds are deep into their own secret conversings....

and to my right..as I chanced upon my screened window...

a glowing pair of strange peering eyes has set its stare on me...