I.

There is a turkey hen that has shown up on the farm.  She sleeps in front of the hen coop after eating a bit of corn that I throw out every morning for the hens.  She has evidently lost her flock and has taken the hens as her own.  Sleeping on the snow covered ground I look upon her with pity, and I feel sadness.

She’s not hurt, but it is difficult to believe that there is not something awry.  And so I feed the hens and she runs to the back, coming back around when I leave.  I wish her the best, but cannot guarantee anything.

II.

It is cold outside and although the sun shines the temperature reminds everything that winter is upon us.  The summer is a far away memory and the spring is something of an illusion.  Remnants of the fall lay covered in ice and snow.  There is always longing for the spring, and from the spring the summer.

This longing for something in the future is, as Buddhists claim, a cornerstone of suffering, and suffer we must because we are human and that is what we do.  Perhaps the happiness that we seek is the time between what we think and how we feel.

III.

The finish work around the house is coming to an end, and with it the realization that there is more to come.  Just as the destruction of the old to make room for the new happens, the realization that the new will sooner than later become old and the cycle will be repeated.

Living our lives looking for newness is innately a failure as there is simply no such thing.  Life is not new and never has been.  Life is old…very old and those ideas that we would give our lives for are repeated for the sake of the illusion of happiness as they must be.