¿Cómo está usted?

It's a pounding rain kind of afternoon at the foot of the Fuego volcano, Sacatepequez, Guatemala. I have been bordering on very depressed all morning. Things! Things in the real world of making deals, observing legal forms, seeking professional help on a couple of business issues. I continue to do my best to contribute with rigorous and honest participation at most levels of life. Sometimes it seems rocky, makeshift or impossible. Am I trying too hard? Preguntas.

How can it be that almost everywhere I look there is ¨difficult¨ behavior being revealed these past days. Even manipulative, sometimes tiresome and now and then occupied with those who are less than straight-forward with me? Is it always about them or am I not paying close enough attention to reality and what's what and what's not what? Frustrated, or am I unwilling to allow the world around me as it REALLY is to sink in?

Perhaps my ´basic decency¨ and inner most ¨common sense¨ making mechanism is overreacting again? Well, maybe, maybe yes and maybe no. I get tired of trying to do the right thing and getting struck/stuck by/in some/any kind of silly far-too-flawed-human embroglio? Big or little, size doesn't seem to matter. It's obviously a challenge for me to ¨get over¨ my hope that some kind of personal/lofty perfection will be rebounded...at least not in/around the overly-hopefilled me. So, acceptance seems to be the key when nonsense, mine and other peoples, seems overwhelming. Keeping in mind that it's not always about me. It REALLY isn't, it helps mucho and gives me cause for calm.

Then there is the good side of things. (and I want more, more, more my addictive nature whispers to me)

Good side of things do happen regularly. How can I doubt the integrity of nature taking it's course properly around me? Life without my scorn happens in a good-way? It does. Often. I love the life I have been given. I love the life I live in Guatemala in my ¨maturing¨ years. I love running next door for hot corn tortillas (tres tiempos) and I love meeting my neighbors and being addressed as Don Leonardo and being respected in everyday kinds of polite and tiny ways. A grin, a nod, a cheerful ¨Good Afternoon¨ from a barefoot/bronze-golden ¨ancient old man¨ or ¨anciano¨ who is probably the same age as me.

I belong to the world around me and that is a very BIG deal. I've evolved as fitting in did happen over time. I am assimilated into the slow, the friendly, the genuine touch of basic humanity as it presents itself around me...it walks up to me, it waits for the bus in front of my house, it laughs with me when we are caught in the pouring rain and it understands, most of all, it, life at the foot of the volcano that nobody is PERFECT. People, humans, fruits and vegtables are a big combination of fresh, ripe, maturing and rotting/rotten...nature does have levels and a timeline. Nature has integrity as it reveals all.

Sometimes I forget that everything and everyone is part of the mix of life progression and SHOULD be (I don't get to choose who is worthy and who is not so gifted)..

Reality just takes some getting used to.

The rain stopped.

Leonardo Ricardo
Leonard Clark Beardsley