…is full of woe.

When you are on vacation, you forget.

About things. Worries. Troubles. Places in the world which are absolutely bat-shat crazy.

Then you read the news, or see “the latest breaking” on a television.

It can all weigh you down, in just a little minute.  They call it “latest breaking” for a reason.  It will break you, all right.

Worries get me coming and going, I’ll tell you.  I get it naturally.  Mostly from my Mom, but a little from my Dad too, I am afraid.  (See?  There I go again.)

There is so much to worry about right here in my little world. (Or, so I think.)  Getting things done right, or not getting them done at all.  People, circumstances, things to fix, or not fix. Places I have to go.

Then, there is the big, colossal, huge world.  Don’t even mention the privation of third world countries, the people blowing each other up over religion, genocide, and the whole dang lot of it.

It is when you read the one story….. that kicks you in the gut.  Somehow.  Clear out of the blue.

So, this it the one that got me the other day. News from Argentina.  An endangered baby dolphin was killed on a beach… sometime last week.  The photo shows a crowd of people, handing the little thing around.  They were taking selfies with the baby dolphin and passing it around, like a bag of dirt.  It was plucked from the water, and handled until its death, by those  beach-goers.  Death by Beach Freaks taking Selfies.

If you’ve never been friends with an animal, you might not understand this.  But I have been.  And I can tell you, unequivocally… they have feelings.  They know what it is like to be in pain, to be scared, to be lonely.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes.  They have done nothing to merit being treated poorly.  Yet it happens.

In the case of this dolphin…. I can’t imagine its fear.  Its confusion.  Its suffering.

Wow, did this one ever hit me hard for some reason.  Maybe it is the culmination of all that is wrong and unjust with this world, and this was the straw.  I don’t know.

Maybe it hit me harder because I read about this on my last day of vacation.  Those two solid weeks of being in a different mind, and time, and space. A good place.

(Please, don’t think for a minute that my heap-o-homebody ever left my body for a minute.  No way. No how.)

But something was different for me this trip. I was able to find my place right there in the minute. I could see me… right where I was standing. Not too many worries. At all.

This was groundbreaking for me. But for all the peace and tranquility, and connectedness that I have been feeling, I am suddenly, and abruptly aware of all that is happening in this world.  And not right where I stand.  All those things which are hurting, and wanting, and needing.

I don’t ever know where the balance is in all of that.  Especially when life goes so very wrong, for so many.  And a great deal of the time, it goes very right for so many of us on the other side of things.

I just know at this moment, it doesn’t seem very clear.  What is what.   And which is which.  I do know I am very thankful for all that has been afforded to me.  And I hope to be a good steward of this life, on this planet, here and now.

But there is a lot in this world which is not going very well. I worry about how to make it better.  And I worry that I’m not doing enough, in the right time.

Oh, how I long to swim in the warm salt water with those peaceful, intelligent, grace-filled dolphins, who seem to do it all just right. Until someone stops them.

“Wednesday’s child is full of woe.”    – The Monday Child’s Poem