Radical birthday

6:58am - May 1, 2025 - River Dourbie.

What would I rather wish for on my birthday than to be reborn? 

Reborn into the same naked body and the same life, but with greater awareness and willingness. 

Birth was given to me with no questions asked, but rebirth is a choice. 

I choose this life that is mine, including all the things I find almost too hard to bear, including all the things I wish I had done differently. 

All such things compose the present, inalterable moment, full also of birdsong and the silent sounds of the forest growing. It is but one moment in the rushing river of time, pulling us inexorably into the next moment that can never be the same.

Who can know what would have been “better”? In the end, all the threads weave into a fabric so vast as to clothe the naked sky of stars.  

I seem to employ every day trying to make this life better than it is. On this one day, birthday, would it not be better to see the best in what already is? 

There are radicals for this and for that, but who has ever heard of radical gratitude? Let alone practiced it.

No, it doesn’t come easily to me either, but every new pattern of thought must begin with an initial intent. 

The day that new intent is born is also the day of our rebirth. 

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Video : the meeting of the two rivers at Cantobria (photos.cantobria.com)

Taken several hours after the video above. Already, so much has changed, and the new perspectives have opened.