U R Loved

There’s been little time for spirit of late. That’s life. The daily grind, the battle for survival, the drudgery of the workweek, and not enough weekend. Laundry, garbage detail, what to make for dinner. Road rage on the commute, a coughing neighbour on the community limo. The little old lady with 12 items in the 10 item express lane and the debit machine is down. Gum surgery. Yeah, life sucks. Or can do. If I let it. Sometimes it overcomes me and I find myself wondering what the heck it’s all about, forgetting that innately, I know what it’s about and this angst is but a phase. A lesson. A reminder. An opportunity.

For what, you ask?

Good question.

I suppose one day I’ll figure it out and when that day comes, I’ll be done. Until then, the struggle continues. The search for joy in the dreariest moment. Panning for bits of glitter in the gravel. Enjoying the journey rather than envisioning the destination.

A couple of years ago, when Ter and I had moved to a little place in the ’burbs and I was a novice transit rider, I’d get into town just as world was waking. More buses than cars in the streets. Public works trucks on their beautification rounds. Civil servants in search of morning coffee and the homeless folks beginning to stir in their sheltered doorways. Walking a few blocks from my stop to the office, I made a point of paying attention, usually for the # 61 zooming by with my wee sister on board. If the timing was right, we could hook up and walk to work like we’d walked to school in the old days. Happy moments even if we had little to say. But I digress.

That year, things at home had gone severely pear-shaped and life was unhappy pretty much everywhere. Every morning I’d ride into town with the rest of the zombies, stunned and despairing that the office had become preferable to conditions in my own home. Paradoxically, Ter and I were learning more about spirit versus intellect, which was actually pretty exciting. It helped us to manage our dilemma and ourselves within that dilemma—but there were days when I just couldn’t get it up, days when I wanted to disappear into fiction and never come out. Days when I felt lost. Abandoned. Mystified. Angry. Yeah, angry was a frequent flyer through that winter.

Then one morning, walking from the stop to the office, my eye caught a line of graffiti spray-painted on a wall at the corner. It was simple, unadorned, and completely out of place in the gritty grey dawn.

U R LOVED

I wish I’d had the camera; I’d have taken a photo of it. Who had put it there? And why? Then I thought, why not? It’s true. I am loved, as we all are loved, and no matter how bad things get, how formidable the obstacles or difficult the people, how interminable the conditions, love is there. Always. Always. Deep in my core, under the layers of programming and intellect and media influence, beneath the doubt and the fear and the insecurity, right in the nucleus of my being, is a little spark that knows U R LOVED. It didn’t start with my parents or my siblings. It predates this phase by millennia and will continue beyond all the phases to come. It’s the one true constant, the easiest thing to forget and the last thing to be remembered.

Until someone spray paints it on a concrete block in big pink letters. Whoever the artist was, they made an indelible impression on me. Now, whenever I feel beleaguered or despondent, when my spirit is sapped and I start to question the point, I remember that morning’s message. It’s on my screen saver at work. I write it on the fridge at home. It doesn’t solve my problems. It doesn’t make everything all right again … but it makes me feel better, and where’s the harm in that?