TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE; The saying itself denotes that something that is good cannot equal truth, doesn’t it? Or that we don’t believe that which is true could be the most supreme experience of ‘good’. And also suggests that we can quantify the amount of ‘good’ an experience holds. Some things are just a little bit good, some maybe are mostly good, and some are mega good. By whose metric might I ask? Why make the distinction at all?
I’m sitting in the backroom of my house, comfortably perched on a futon with a soft flannel sheet. I’ve been trying to meditate but am endlessly distracted or falling asleep, there are no other ways for me and meditation at this phase of my life, but still I try. I ditch the meditation app and open my eyes, I’m perfectly situated to look out the massive windows that overlook the backyard and beyond. The sky is muted blue with clouds like brushed out fleece gliding by in shades of white and grey. The hickory trees which have been dormant for months have just this week burst back to life, the limbs tangled with vibrant green leaves making it seem that they have never been bare, our eyes must have deceived us. Long grass rippling in the slight breeze, one of our cats bounding like a deer, popping up his head every so often as he stalks some unseen creature. The left side of my yard is a riot of colour – bright purple, soft mauve and off white and even here in the house, high above, I can smell the heady floral lilacs and apple blossoms. To the right I just catch the view of the sweeping green grass, Steve walking down the trodden path, another cat marching alongside like a faithful companion, the weathered grey boards of the barn pitched up against the sky.
A good view.
The bucolic view, the flowers, the creatures, the cloud dotted sky, the myriad birds calling, the stone house, the trim colour, my family safe and taken care of by someone other than me. All of these once wishes, often spoken secretly in my heart, now here in realtime for me to enjoy. When we stop to allow ourselves the gift of what we created it’s almost impossible to do anything but be agape at it all. We might be easily fooled to believe that it needs to be something grand to ‘count’ — the Ferrari you dreamed of owning as a child — but that erroneously causes us to miss the real-time manifestations as they happen. You are the artist of your life, have you checked out your creation lately?
Can you see our new friend?
Sure there is also the fact that the yard doesn’t quite offer any shade and I’m constantly shuffling the girls in for shade breaks then back out for doses of vitamin D, slathering us in aloe each night. We have a dramatic tick infestation and don’t seem to pass a day without finding at least one (more coming, keep reading). Though over 100 acres of forest and farmland sit between us and the highway, on most days the traffic is obnoxiously loud, making me fight myself over what’s more important – fresh air or quiet. The road we’re on, a little close for comfort to the front of the house, never being fully relaxed when the girls (and cats) are running around outside. The fact that the RV we renovated and travelled in has now sat idle for nearly 2 years, for sale with no takers, costing us a small mortgage-sized payment each month, taunting us to go explore, but…where? And that my head just isn’t in ‘the game’, I have 1000 creative ideas and no execution, my income now a third of what it was this time last year and feeling impotent at the thought of changing that.
What of this balance, the tipping of the scales, where focusing on the bad incites panic and feelings of shortcoming and failure but the world seems to want me to live in that space because the other, the lilacs/limestone farmhouse/nanny/guinea hen is simply too good to be true and fanciful to even believe that I consciously or unconsciously created it. There are reasons we are told not to believe in our own power of creation and manifestation and none of them are for our benefit.
We’re told:
It’s too good to be true, because what’s true is not good or at least not so good that we want to sink to our knees with the gravity of appreciation and gratitude. The truth is hard to hear, life is fraught with disaster and inequality and heartache, get your head out of the clouds and back into the real world.
It’s too good to be true because we are constantly quantifying the amount of goodness allowed into our lives and comparing to others, if it becomes too big then suddenly we are privileged, self-involved, not compassionate for the plight of others, not acknowledging what’s negative, challenging or bad.
It’s too good to be true because if you let on that you’re feeling so much good in your life the universe will take it all away – because you can’t believe in a higher power being fully benevolent and only looking out for your best interest, ensuring that your life is spent in an endless unfolding of joyful experiences.
Truth; there can’t be something that is too good because the extreme experiences of goodness and joy are our birthright. It’s why we came here as humans with senses to feel it all. And living a life that is good, desiring good, seeking good, creating good, applauding the good in no way takes the good experiences away from anyone else. In fact it simply amplifies and multiplies the good, making more for others to share in. We can for absolute certain sit in hard and dark times but we do not live there, we do not build our home there, we do not invite others into it to also not climb out. We offer our care and our comfort for those who need it, we seek it when we need it ourselves, but we cannot make someone else’s experience lighter by making our own darker.
Life is full of challenge and also full of opportunity. It may not look like the picture in our mind but stop for a sec and take in what’s around you and notice what of your creation is there, because I promise you it is, we’re just trained to ignore it.
Our guinea hen on the other side of our 2nd story bathroom window!
Back to the guinea hen. Recently my mom and I sat having a visit. I told her of our woeful tick trials, how I’m not fearful of getting sick from them as we are all healthy people with well-insulated immune systems in full working order, but that it’s such an invasion to find the pests everywhere. They’re highly icky really, and I’m not bothered by much. My mom is bothered by much and especially bothered by the thought of ticks on her grandbabies and cried out “what can be done?!” To which I replied “guinea hens are great for managing ticks”. “You need a guinea hen” she replied, and you know what? Less than 24 hours later, as I walked out to gather the girls playing under the shade of the lilacs-that-dreams-are-made-of, a plump guinea hen strode up on my right, busily pecking away. We were sure she was passing through, perhaps wayward from some neighbouring farm, though that felt unlikely. We worried that first night the coyotes would get her but the next day she was there on the lawn, clucking and pecking. And every day since, weeks later, she circles our home. Now – we do still have ticks, I suspect an army of guinea hens couldn’t get rid of them at this point, but tell me that hen isn’t a miracle. A little humorous nod from the universe to remind me that my thoughts (and my moms!) are magic spells of creation playing out in my life. That’s how I choose to see it anyway, nothing too good to be true about it.