How do you measure your achievements?

 A productivity guru on LinkedIn just asked how we plan to measure our achievements in 2024.

Hm. I thought about it. I don't need an app for that. I'll do this:

How about you? Do you have measuring and goal-making plans for 2024? I feel I've just lost that plot, never to return.

I will measure the joy I can wring out of every day

Every sunbeam I can gather.

I will measure the gratitude I remember to have

And the friends I remember to thank

I will count the people I love,

The people I like

The people who choose to help me, to write me, to love me.

The unexamined life is not worth living, but maybe the measurement most important

Is the light we choose to shine

The light we produce with our choices

The praises we sing with our voices.

The measure of joy is not in the actual achievements

But in the counting up of every healthy step.

Every step on the path I take that helps another, is worth it.

Every word I speak that lifts a heart, is worth it.

Every time I rejoice in the health and good feelings of my body, my activity, my meditations, is worth it.

Those "wasted" little words of praise for each individual, 

the hours I spend writing that I'll never publish... they cast light. 

They enable the receiver.

They lift hearts.

Those little words I write are doing their tiny butterfly-wing part to make the world a better place, because each person who receives that seed passes it to another.

We are a relay of light, or we are a relay of dark.

How shall I measure my accomplishments? 

By the light cast 

along the path 

where I have passed.

What else is even worth counting?

The Fool

Fools wear bright colours

and dance erratically

Serious folk

Think Fools don't know where we're going.

In Tarot, they're card zero.

Unlike the grown-up cards

The Fool can not be contained or defined

by a number.

Zero, like Infinity

Is impossible to grasp.

We love it

We're fascinated

We hate it.

In a playing deck, the Joker

Is anything.

Often left out

But when needed, all-powerful.

By being nothing

Indefinable

Hard to Catch

The Fool is Greater than the rest.

Fools are temporarily popular

When the mood is good.

They're the first to burn

When the crowd needs to blame. 

Different.

Indefinable.

Scary.

Do you dare to be the Fool?

If not, if you're afraid –

Take a number. Be anything else.

Be easier to tame.

Be safe.

Do not go out naked, naive, innocent

on a mal-informed adventure.

wise men say that

fools rush in

where angels fear to tread

But indecision is more foolish!

Do Something, 

And if you hate that,

Do Something Else.

That is wisdom

The wisdom of innocence. 

Of rushing in

And carrying on

Go with a pure clear heart

See, adapt

Climb, continue

Believe. Try.

And keep trying.

Don't listen to the numbered folks.

The rules folks

The "you can't" folks.

You can. If you will.

The Fool will.

The Fool always will.

Because the Fool has not heard 

that she can't.

So she will.

Ignorance is bliss is possibility.

The Garden Hose of Love

 

I am a cat

I follow the sunbeams around the house all day. 

I'll follow them outside rather than be in a shadow.

People think I appear and disappear like the mist.

I'm made for adventure.

I am intolerant of noisy people and likely to leave the room when noise starts.

I love to be petted... by the right hand, but don't tolerate the wrong one.

I love to stretch luxuriously and just sit there gazing at people I love.

I love to snuggle and be cozy and warm.

I don't need you for food... I can hunt my own. 

... But I'll gladly share a meal and company if the meal and company are good.

I'm loyal to people who are worthy of it.

I don't follow rules that don't make sense to me.

I can't be caged.

But I'm symbiotically beneficial when the conditions are right.

 

A drop to drink

Old OneFish

Rests his too-long fins 

Looks so peaceful and cozy

Hovering above the ledge of a bowl

Or lightly in his hollow log

Just that little thing.

So nice.

I sit on the stairs so I can hang with him

Pull up the coffee table

Rest my laptop

Like his fins

He eats lightly these days

Like any well-aged person

Impassive, disdainful, as extra food drifts past

Young TwoFish darts for every morsel

She vacuums the extra from the bottom.

Do they hear the storm battering the hatches?

The house felt like a submarine last night.

Me, under the water, but cozy inside.

I'm going to have to brave the storm

To go for drinking water

I should have put some buckets outside last night

So much water came down!

The waves are frothing

Whiter than cream

Everything around here is called white this or blanche that

I wonder if it's named for the waves and not the sand?

It's the kind of weather to name a place for

For sure.

But OneFish is peaceful as ever.

And Kokopelmana Twofish doesn't seem to know 

There's a storm either.

Beauty without

Beauty within

Water without

Water within

Must plan better

To get a drop to drink!

I think of this as one of those CBC poems -- those things people come up with when they live alone in the country with quiet time to think and then CBC people put them on the radio for other people who live alone in the country. :)

Russ Everett

 I knew this man named Russ.

We met online and I think we were maybe friends right away.

We didn't date, precisely. No kisses, none of that.

But connection, yes. Wasn't that what we were all looking for online? 

Well, 

I think of him a lot, anyway, more than a dozen years later.

So I guess we're connected.

I remember lying under a tree by Glenmore Reservoir

Staring up at the sky.

Was that the first time we met?

I think I remember him saying that I taught him something that day. 

Something about staring up at the sky. I don't remember what, but maybe, simply, that it was important to take time to do that, lie under yellow-leaved trees and marvel at the blue blue sky.

He taught me.

He taught me something important, but at the time he said it, I was surrounded by less wise friends, silly little folk who believed in making others fit expectations (an impossible task, really, a foolish goal). 

Russ said, "If you want him, you gotta accept."

And I think I said "but..." and "what about..." and all kinds of other silly, small, foolish things.

And Russ was a mountain. Russ knew.

If you want him, you can only take him as he is. That's how it works, said Russ.

Russ was not silly, and Russ was not small.

And Russ died way too young, but his lessons live on.

Alone but not alone

Me attempting to emulate Rumi. Will keep practicing.

 To bed alone, and awake, alone…

Well, I can

Take the time to stretch the body

To drink the lemon water

To ponder the advice of friends

Open the door and the air here is kissing me

Embracing me

Calling me to walk

But the neighbour stepped on a nail (that does not sound poetic)

the sea is singing to the right of me

I could use some jokers to the left

Ah. A deer. 

Another doe and her daughters

And then another two.

Jumping and joking, as requested.

Blue jays

Fluffing and flitting 

Even funnier.

A friend from France

Joins me for some conversation

The shades of loneliness

Men, our kids, ourselves… 

A heart touch.

I am alone, but not alone.