Marking territory

I find it interesting that when I focus my attention on one thing, it reappears in another form elsewhere.

For the past few days I have been painting steel pickets with a white paint. In the full sun they are bright. Painting them forces me to squint. Painting them also forces me to think.

The white stakes were made to mark out the new boundaries of the land being sold. As I was punching them into the ground a few hundred meters apart, not only did the “whiteness” of the stakes stand out strongly against the background, I also began to think of the color “white” as synonymous with “territory”.

Walking home, “white” and “territory” popped up everywhere.

The blossoming native currant bush with its hundreds of tiny white flags beckoned the busy bees to enter into their territorial space.

Out of the blue green ocean the white flag of the cascading wave emerged to beckon surfers into its territorial waters.

After having seen more white in one day than I would normally see in a week (even though the white was always there), I began to think that how a person views the world influences what they see in the world.

Today my focus was on white pickets and marking territory; hence, I saw more of this everywhere than I normally would. Likewise, when a fireman goes home, his senses are more in tune to see fire (or its potential) than mine would be. A police officer has better antenna to notice crime. Lawyers see defamation in every word (and money).

The Dali Lama? Because he meditates on loving kindness constantly, is he more capable than others in finding the love that resides in everyone and everything?

In other words, given that there is probably an equal amount of joy and suffering in the world, to have more joy in our lives it is not a matter of inventing it or working desperately to create it. We don’t have to do much more than just start seeing it. It is there already. Instead of focusing on the pain of life, squint your eyes and learn to see the abundant beauty that is everywhere, now, calling out to us to come suckle on the sweetness of its nectar.

And one last thing on things white.

Walking out onto my deck lately, I have noticed the beautiful white, painterly markings left by the tenant kookaburras marking out their territory in the branch above.