I have a confession to make. My relationship isn't as perfect as it looks on Facebook.

'You've had an awesome year!' people gush, looking at our travel photos that we share for family and friends (about all I use that tyrannical platform for). And if Facebook is to be believed, why yes we have. We've climbed Glastonbury Tor. We travelled Northern India (before the pandemic broke out). We lived in a narrow boat on the canals in South West England for a few weeks. We visited the deserts in NE Victoria.

But that's only part of the story.

My husband's spent part of this year pretty depressed - especially when we got back home. Far from his mum and sister, and we're not allowed to leave the country. So if something happens to his Mum, he can't be home in 24 hours. It's the tyranny of distance, the awful cost of migrating to the other side of the world. We're going back to jobs we hate next year, though this year was meant to be about finding alternatives - alternative jobs, alternative countries, alternative lives - but, like everyone, the pandemic got in the way of that I suppose.

And sometimes it's really easy to focus on the negatives. The crack in the ceiling. The easterly winds that mean we can't surf everyday like we wanted to when we weren't working. The rust on the Landrover. The weeds on the garden paths. The shut borders. The government failings. The failing economy. The lack of jobs. Climate change. Species dying out. You know. From the small stuff to the big stuff, life seems to suck sometimes, even if you live in the first world and things are essentially okay, and by world standards, you're priveleged, though wracked with guilt for being okay when everyone else is on tenter hooks.

Plus, that guilt for being part of a world that makes for other people's suffering. Yeah, that can weigh on you.

As Melbourne musician Blake Scott puts it, 'mining magnates lick their lips, about best practice for welfare recipients whilst drinking the average salary in a weekend on their yacht'. Class tensions. Deaths of indigenous people in custody. Domestic violence. A country run by 'racist, sexist, swinging dicks, vile old pile of misanthropes'. Focus on that shit a little bit too long, refresh the news feeds too many times, and that stuff seeps into your bones. Makes you angry and frustrated. And what happens to those feelings when you can't do anything about them? They sit on your chest, and turn into depression.

I guess every couple goes through those moments, right? When you're walking on eggshells around the other's unhappiness. It doesn't matter what you say - how they feel is how they feel and it can be very hard to jolly them along. And you sink into the quagmire a little too.

But of course, nothing is permanent, even though it seems to last a long time.

Last week, I lost my bananas at my beloved, screaming to the sky what I believed to be the truth. I didn't mean to shout but I felt this thing rise up in my belly, explode in my chest and radiate to the sky, the earth, the winds.

Look at what is important. Eveything else isn't. It's all layers of bullshit that stops us connecting to the truth, to our hearts. We are no better than the fairy wren in that tree, the pelicans flying overhead, the sun in the sky. This is what matters. This. Focus on this - the warm breeze on your face, the bird song, the dirt on your hands. Anything else is a lie. Why give it more importance than it's worth? We don't have the power to change it, and that's okay. But we do have the power to be kind. To create beauty. To be loving. To be the best people we can be. Focus on anything else and your energy changes into something that doesn't serve you, or the world.

It shocked me a little., this outpouring. And it shocked him too.

But since then, we've slid into happiness again.

How wonderful it is, to be in the world.

Happiness - joy - is where we put our attention. It's not allowing others to steal attention from what really, essentially, perfectly matters.

Like a confirmation, the next verse from Lorin Roche's 'Radiance Sutras' we read (as is our now daily habit, since my outburst - as a reminder of these truths we can be led away from) is this one:

All this talk of purity and impurity
These are just opinions. Beyond them
Are the miraculous energies of curation.

Rays of light from a trillion suns
Illumine the altar of your sky.
Rolling blue-green oceans
Sanctify the air you breathe.
In this moment, you are inhaling their blessing.
Who are you to call any of this pure or impure?

Find the center around which everything revolves -
Stand here and be flooded with joy.'

And so these photos of trees, shared with family and friends on Facebook, are perfect. How lucky we are, to live in such a beautiful world. How blessed. How full of joy we are, in this divine moment, right now.