Life is like a soap bubble...not a box of chocolates....?

Soap bubbles.

Well, my attempt at painting soap bubbles .

Why paint soap bubbles?

Life is like a soap bubble?

Here one minute gone the next?

Fragile and impermanent?

For months, I have been taking my son to the hospital to have a number of tests done in order to discover what the cause of his pain and re-occurring bumps may be. Most of the time these test were done at the oncology (cancer) out-patients department, and while I was waiting for my son to have his tests done, I had the opportunity to do a lot of thinking.

When things flow in our lives, when we feel in charge and pretty sure of what comes next; it can be easy to forget just how fragile and unpredictable life can be.

An unexpected diagnosis can have devastating consequences for our lives, so can losing a job, a loved one, come to think of it; there are perhaps a great many things/people that we take for granted that were we to "lose" them the fragility and unpredictability of life would become very clear and immediate to us.

Pop! goes that bubble.

We all come with an "expiry" date, perhaps even more so, everything living has an expiry date, but somehow in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of  just living, that bit of knowledge gets pushed back into the recesses of our minds. Which in my view is a good thing; life only happens now.

In every second hides the potential for the discovery of something wonderful, something beautiful, something extraordinary.

 

A few days ago the weather roared.

 Lightning, thunder, and intermittent squalls.

The cat ran for cover, out went the power.

The trees rustled and whooshed, while the rain whipped and washed.

We waited, my son and I, for the weather to pass us by.

Which it did; after and hour or two; then out came the sun and the sky turned blue.

Standing by the window, looking out across the meadow,

clinging to a branch, an extraordinary drop of water.

Somehow it managed to sparkle, with colours remarkable.

Just a common drop of water, yet an extraordinary display,

of unexpected beauty, to my eyes had found its way.

 

That drop of water reminded me of the importance of taking the time to appreciate beauty in the midst of the ordinary, it reminded me to not take life for granted and in doing so let precious moments slip by unnoticed.

If life is like a soap bubble, then life is short, precarious, fragile, impermanent, but also colourful, fun, beautiful, any shape, any size, and the aspect of its impermanence,

also makes it more precious.