"Have you called yourself Boundless Bliss today?" The words shot out unexpectedly from Dr. Merriman, our teacher.He was pointing his finger at me and the other twenty-nine pupils of this class of adults were staring at me, wondering what I'd say. "Ummmm..." I stalled. "Well, no,..."
"Well then, do it!" he said with a smile as wide as his seasoned face.
I've thought about that a lot lately. Not especially because my beloved teacher said so, but because it's become a part of my nature to feel boundlessly blissful, especially in my first waking hour of any given day. I'll be snugly wrapped in my robe, just finished with breakfast, gazing at the candles I've lit on the table across the room. It's still dark outside so the curtains are closed. All is silent and serene except for the steady tick of the grandfather clock beside me, the brook's music outside my door, and the faint murmur of humanity far beyond the perimeters of our city oasis called Quail Creek.
I haven't taken in the paper yet. The world that far outside of mine can wait. Here in my comfy chair I feel snug and happy. No pains. No angst. No worry. As far as I'm concerned, this is the sweetest kind of freedom I know. I'm satisfied, not because things are perfect, but because somewhere there's a young mother holding her babe in a similar setting. I don't mean just one. Many. I was once like them. There's a father off to work, glad to have a job he's happy with. And there must be other grandmothers and great-grandmothers who look benignly on, knowing that without them the family they know and love would not have been quite the same.
After a life has been lived, what does one do? Get up to be cranky? Get up to sulk or sorrow? Get up to worry? Get up to be angry and ugly? I laugh as these options roll off my pen. People may call me Pollyanna if they will, but if they're within earshot I'll smile and set them straight.
A dear grandson-in-law told his wife, my granddaughter, "I would give anything to have the faith that your grandmother has, but I don't." Since he hasn't said it to me, I'll wait. I'll wait for all who love me enough to listen and then I'll say, "Never mind, my dears. You will have such faith and more. As you live and learn, you'll see through a more spiritual lens. You'll see that you've lived your lives as best you could. You've made mistakes. Sometimes serious ones. But then you'll know better for the next go-around. You'll wake up to each new day and find how easy it is to drop despair when life comes into a better focus, when the dark gives way to dawn.
How do I know this for sure? Because it's happened to me. Knowing what could have been better in my life is a sign, not that it will automatically become better, but that I can make it better. I'll have another chance, another go-around in the cycles of Life.
Everything I've seen in this life points to this. There is an undeniable continuity of existence. Look up at the stars, for instance. You may see, through the eyes of space telescopes, a dead star, but then again you'll come upon a glowing cradle of warm golden light where newly born stars shoot out into space. They are glad, expectant, joyous! How can we help but see that? There are countless signs of living, moving, working, loving, laughing right here on earth. I choose to watch these and leave the darker sides of the scene until they come into a clearer light, where all will be revealed in the lens of truth, transformed and understood.
So, here I sit in grandmotherly glory and I know now that I can answer my teacher honestly. "Yes, Dr. Merriman, I'm getting older, true, but I'm getting better too, and I have called myself Boundless Bliss today!"
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