A few years ago I had a Blog I called The Goodness Chalkboard, and the concept was to write about good things, as if the Blog were a chalkboard. It was appropriate since I was a teacher at the time. I had always seen my teaching platform as one where I could contribute to my students much more than the subject matter, Spanish in my case. I wanted to let them know that they were great, that their lives were meaningful and that life was wonderful. Throughout the last years of teaching, before I retired, I saw a lot of competing negativity seeping into the classroom. Beginning with a greater administrative load for teachers, and a greater negative media content that invaded the classroom with the use of the internet and the PEDs, personal electronic devices. Both for personal reasons and because I had very few readers, I abandoned the Chalkboard almost at the same time I retired from teaching after almost 40 years.
With this new Blog, Wonderful Simplicities, I want to rekindle my efforts in bringing to readers the message that life is indeed beautiful and that every moment counts as a wonderful experience. And I have to add, I will do it whether I have readers or not.
Today I drove out of our home in the Southwest of Florida with my wife at 3:00 a. m. toward an airport two hours away. It was pitch dark, but life seemed bright after our experience with hurricane Irma. My wife and I were tired. She was exhausted from working around the house and caring for our young daughter of special needs, and I was tired from working for 12 hours on my feet. My wife looked beautiful in black leggings, a white top and one of those short sleeve sweaters that are popular nowadays. As I drove I occasionally caressed her arm. It was smooth and I acknowledged to myself that I love this woman, my partner. We talked almost the entire time, about our goals, our desires, our dissatisfaction with what we had accomplished so far, our commitments to do better. We talked about spirituality and about paying bills and about some progress a few of our children have made. We drove East, so a faint line of light grew on the horizon. We had electricity now after almost a week of moving around the house with a little flashlight. We had hot water to bathe. The garbage had finally been picked up and the lake behind us was tranquil again. Life was definitely beautiful and wonderful. My wife was going to visit our oldest son and our granddaughter in a Northern state and the airfare had been very inexpensive.
A while later, waiting for boarding at her gate, we heard another traveling mother ask her daughter on the telephone if she had gotten to her job alright, if she was near the security guards at her place of work–I gathered by the conversation that it was a hospital. The woman’s eyes showed so much love for her daughter that I was very moved. I have seen that same love in my wife’s eyes, even if they were tinted by the pain of knowing that one of our children was smoking pot.
Overall, life is a wonderful tapestry of unique moments to be relished, all of them. If you can accept that, then, you must be tired of all the negative crap that surrounds us.
Copyright 2017 J. G. Herrera
WONDERFUL SIMPLICITIES By Author J. G. Herrera 