flaking paint

Spring sunshine warms the old wooden window frame

Another flake of paint peels away

When we are looking outwardly at things in the inanimate world, it is so easy to see that existence is a process. Things are happening, the sun is shining, the paint on the old window frame is peeling. It seems simple. It is simple. Yet, when we look at our own life, we somehow see it to be complicated. We consider ourself to be in control, having choices, decisions to be made. But if someone, from another planet perhaps, another form of consciousness, were to be observing us, watching us as we sit in the spring sunshine, they would see: We also are like that old wooden window frame. And just sitting in the sun, some layer of paint which we slapped on ourselves many years ago, is peeling, flaking, falling away. It is life following its own natural course. We are young, we know nothing, we put on masks. As we grow older, as the grains in our wood grow deeper, that old layer of paint, that mask begins to crack up. It can no longer hide who we really are. Slowly, slowly, we also feel no urge to hide who we really are. Then in the course of time the masks, the layers of paint, flake away and we are revealed like that bare wooden window frame. Yes we are gnarled, we have deep creases, furrows, here and there we’ve been chipped away, and yet there is a beauty in that ageing, those signs of having lived. We can allow ourselves to be seen, whatever we are. And it is happening anyway. We don’t need to do anything about it. The process has its own rhythm. We just need to sit in the sunshine and feel the warmth of those rays, and allow – allow those masks to drop away, allow our paint to flake and peel away.