As I feel the sun on my face & look up...as I sit beneath a staple of leaves that has more life than me...I am calm.  The birds nesting in the center that sing me a sweet morning song, but will bomb dive me if i get just a little too close to their doorstop brings feelings of joy, peace & also fear.  Life is about balance.  All sides of balance.  Family, loss, change.  Every aspect of life conforms us.  As my youngest son finishes his eleventh grade year & becomes a senior, I will celebrate my fathers birthday the following day remembering him & the balance of life.  There are so many routes to learn from.  Growth, change, experience, sadness, awakening.  So many emotions can take you & lead you on an incredible journey.  Its amazing how we are all living life & yet, life is living within us...but, we tend to forgot the beauty of the life that lives within.  We fill it with & also from poison, allowing ourselves to believe what we can & cannot do.  Poisoning our minds to help us regress little by little, so that we question ourselves way to much & allow others to question our reasoning.  We present our explanations like a scolding.  From all saddness & poison that bestoys upon us we find we must learn to accept all & regrow ourselves with that empty hollow of a space.  What we forget is that even though we are damaged, there is always room for mending if life lives within.  Patch those souls & watch your branches reach out to areas that you thought were out of reach.  Water the roots from the tears that flow from sadness & happiness & your leaves will grow.  Allow the warmth of souls around you to bring you joy, not take it, & watch in amazement how those blossoms will open.  I wonder if anyone pondered cutting down this over 50 year old Rhodedendrum just because its brances were tattered & its leaves poisonous.  Imagine the beauty we would have missed out on...just sayin'