Who is Your Enemy?

If I scan my life for happy memories, a vast number of them are simply of beautiful days spent outside. Lots are about laughing (or deeply sharing) with my siblings, my friends, my folks, sometimes strangers. Lots are of being alone. Many, many, are of playing, writing, or listening to music.
Do I have to place them in an order? No, I can't. They're just different hues of my happiness. I worry, maybe unnecessarily, about another winter coming. Winter is always hard for me. I know it's possible for it not to be so hard, if I'm incredibly connected to some kind of life-line. But... well, I feel such a kind of grief at the end of summer. This is a stupid analogy, but it's like a lover withdrawing, growing distant. Now it's mid-July, my favourite month of the year and my birth-month. I feel intimate with the Outside - so much that it feels stupid to call it the Outside. It's really the Inside. Year after year, I miss much more of it than I can stand. So when I see summer begin to die, I just - feel bereft somehow.

Our winters aren't so bad. People survive them. Do I deserve to let myself dream about spending my winters somewhere warm and continuously bright? Spend more of my time as a human without walls around me? What a mean old nag, guilt, always ragging on people who dare to want more happiness. (Guilt = it's a cop out. Winter is the necessary balance to summer, just as sorrow balances joy. Leaving winter is a means of running away.)

Who is your enemy? Mind is your enemy. No one and nothing can harm you more than your own mind. Who is your friend? Mind is your friend. No one and nothing can help you more than your own mind. So said Buddha.

It's so true. I am so afraid of my mind sometimes. That's what holds me back. What if I go to the tropics for 3 months, alone. What if my big bad scary mind beats me up?

...Can I learn to rival it with big bad joyful mind?

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