My Diversified Portfolio Ain't Made Of Cash

Sometimes there are times when we bear witness to moments of such acute beauty, and feel such a subsequent rapture (maybe it's quiet, maybe it's in technicolor) -- if only for a few potent seconds. These are unplanned moments that send us heaven-bound, briefly breaking the gravitational pull that keeps us vertical, feet firmly planted on Earth. When a rapturous moment really gets my attention it's like an imprisonment to just seal it up for myself. I want to share . . .

. . . The way it felt to float in water, just off a Greek beach, shocked by how it felt to be in a body with no tension; the nightly thunder+lightning storms in Puerto Vallarta, more thrilling than a prohibited motorcycle ride -- more intoxicating than a glass and another glass of inky red Malbec.

Lately, I've had a string of these rapturous moments. I'm still not sure what to call these episodes. Some last a few seconds, and some stretch on a bit longer. Are they teeny-tiny epiphanies? Little bursts of illumination? Are they the result of a brain chemistry lapsing from a lack of electrolytes, or an armada of neurons firing without cause?

On the surface, on paper, I might appear to be a down-on-her-luck victim of a world gone stupid broke -- a world that highly educated MBA graduates can no longer count on conquering with a mere flick of a resume, and a breezy, self-assured interview performance. But, I don’t feel like a pauper. Not in my mind and not in my heart.

The truth is that these days my distractions are few. I am free to fall down a well of introspection at will -- without the pounding of a 9 to 5 job, and the creeping fatigue of a workweek. The result: I’ve experienced a calm that had eluded me for some time. I’ve let it take me by the hand. It has shown me that the world around me is constantly offering up little lustrous pearls, little time-shaped anomalies, in cracked open shells – to anyone interested in looking.

These moments, these pearls, are what make up my diversified portfolio.

. . . The 24-second guitar riff that stops me cold, and then heats up the tops of my ears . . . and the auditory luster of it is so strong I don’t know if I should move, or cease breathing for stillness’ sake just to capture it and house part of it inside of me.

. . . The way little kids, unmarked by artifice, can speak remarkably candid truths, revealing their perspectives: unwarped, all love, all hope-filled.

How about this: On a walk, in my hometown, cars passing by, people walking their dogs, teens in Emo gear walking home from school, all on an ordinary afternoon, on what's been an ordinary day, when a mere glance westward reveals a motley blanket of clouds, and a fiercely orange orb languidly dispersing its diminishing rays through the gathered condensation. It casts an array of celestial pinks wide, wide across the sky. How does that not speak to you if you really stop to look at it? How does that not lift you outside of yourself – no pharmacology required?

This is when one finds the rules of physics grow momentarily cold, and Earth's grasp on you is momentarily less than it was . . .

. . . And every time I have a transfixion, even in my beat down Converse, and tangled hair, I am humbled. A resonant gratitude swells large in my heart . . . and it beams out to my fingertips, alighting the corners that surround me.