The body-mind is tired today. It’s not as young as it used to be. Yet when I notice, awareness is unchanged, just as it was back when I was a little child. Clear, calm, untouched, fresh, vital.

I see how easy it might be to slide into the mind’s snare of grief that the body tires more easily, that skin is looser, that if I eat as much as I did ten years ago, I gain weight. Grief may seem like a heavy word, but when I touch in to the sensations in the body, it is sensations that are familiarly labeled grief. But instead, I lean into the clear, calm untouched, fresh, and vital.

Then I feel more like this picture, taken in 1994 (in the big glasses era).

I don’t have to look in the mirror, do I?

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2012