Bella woke up one day and thought to herself, "I really ought to contribute something to the world. So far, all I've done is eat and sleep and soil the backyard."
She dressed and set out on a contemplative walk in the Maine woods.
For many hours she pondered questions such as: Are my skills with frosting good enough to be a professional cake maker at Hannaford's? Am I hardy enough to fish offshore? Do I own enough natural woolen underclothes to be a Waldorf teacher?
After many hours of walking amongst the fungi, milkweed, moss and lichen, Bella decided she would become a photojournalist/life coach.
She emerged from the woods with a happy heart and a new enthusiasm for life... plus a big stack of freshly printed business cards.
At home, Bella called a family meeting to make announcements about her career and her general philosophy of life.
Bella's photography style would reflect the work of David Hockney and her life coach techniques would be based on St. Francis of Assisi and the pope who is named after that great saint.
***
She rode public transportation in Brazil, Argentina, and in Rome itself searching for unwed mothers and lepers.
She baptized babies, absolved sins, wore a hairshirt, threw herself into rosebushes and bathed the terminally ill. Then she created photo collages about her experiences and showed them at galleries in Los Angeles and Berlin.
Those were dramatic, event- filled years for Bella, and she looked back on her slothful youth with wonder.
How could she have been so sleepy? And so content with Taste of Yak Milk Dog Chow for so long?
It must have been the result of drinking chlorinated town water and having a fenced in backyard, she concluded.
For many years, Bella enjoyed success as a photojournalist/life coach. She even got to go to Botswana and Tibet.
And it was during one of her trips to the troubled roof of the world (that is Tibet) when she was struck by the idea that there is more to life than baptizing babies born out of wedlock and making photo collages about lepers and showing those photo collages in Berlin.
Bella met a Buddhist monk yogi who spent at least half of each year alone in a cave meditating. He was told to seek Bella out so that she might carry some necessary information to the rest of the world, not just to a gallery in Berlin. The monk told Bella that sentient beings can be liberated from their suffering. He demonstrated how to breathe, how to move and how to tell the mind: not this, not that. ***
Bella shared what she could understand with American and European online newspapers. And with Canadian university students.
As soon as she felt like she had completed her work she set out to find her own cave in Tibet.
Never again did she display photo collages and never again did she baptize a street baby.
She ate a small amount of fruit a few times a year but other than that she sat still in a cave with her eyes rolled up toward her forehead.
And after eight years, Bella dissolved into the sparkling light of the cosmos.
