When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side or both equally.

Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold.

At that point we can either freak out or settle in.

Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness, calm.

We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. It’s frustrating.

Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Very Frustrating.

Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift.

We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here, in both columns, and add two more columns, four columns, now we have the emotional shower.

We start to adjust our expectations to meet with the mood and texture of what’s happening.

Frustration comes when our expectations don’t match reality. We so want to be right. On one side of the page. But it doesn’t work like that.

The cemetery is filled with righteous people.