One day, as I sat on a rock by the river that runs through Erleichda, I heard someone singing. I had been listening to the birds, and the multitude of voices of the Australian bush on a hot summers day. Watching the birds in the trees, an old man goanna hoping for food, and a rare sight indeed, not one but three or four platypuses in the water below me.
The river runs straight for about a kilometre or so through Erleichda, from south to north; it swings in from west, and out to the east. Around the corner he appeared, a young man in a canoe, paddling slowly with the current, and singing.
As he drew nearer the life around me disappeared. No birds, no goanna, no platypuses; the songs of the bush died, leaving only the sound of his singing. He was happy, his song strong and in its way beautiful.
I realised as he passed, not seeing me, seeing only scenery, that he was surrounded by, enclosed in, a sphere of silence of his own creation.
Soon he passed by, then out of sight where the river turned to the east, and as he passed, life in the bush resumed.
Positive thinking can be like this. You create a world that encloses you, at the expense of seeing and hearing what is really going on. Sometimes it is best just to float along with the current, and acknowledge another reality.
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