After we escaped from the aggravating agglomeration known as Chicagoland, the drive from South Bend, Indiana to Albert Lea was sort of bland yet exhausting, the landscape huge, the rest stops tidy. Crossing the Mississippi was impressive, especially imagining how people managed to do so in the olden days!
Honey Girl is a calm and pleasant traveler; no complaints about her. Traveling all day with another person is not so easy. Heck, spending all day in a car hurtling down the highway at 70 miles an hour is not that relaxing, no matter who you’re with. I feel a new-found admiration for truck drivers, who do that every day, all day.
As a reminder to be grateful, despite the irritations of daily life which are after all impermanent, I’ve brought three little stones to align at the end of each day in our motel room. They resemble a cool rock formation seen somewhere in Wisconsin!
Here’s a good thought for the day ahead from Gabriel Cohen:
“I used to think of the spiritual path as a detached, solo journey, like Moses trekking up the mountain or the Buddha wandering off to sit under his bodhi tree. I imagined how challenging it would be to renounce life’s pleasures and meditate in a cave. Now I realize that life offers a much more common but just as powerful spiritual trial: just try getting along with one other person for the rest of your life.”
Cohen, in “Of Course I’m Angry,” in Right Here with You, 143.
Daily Joy with Honey Girl 