This is one of my favorite poems. Emotions as guests, sent as guides to show us some thing or some way. Emotions that lead us down a path, enabling an encounter with an aspect of our selves that may be difficult to contact another way. Emotions offer the opportunity to recognize a pattern or perhaps merely to experience one. Each emotion valuable. This can be so hard to recognize when we're caught up in the emotions themselves. And that is the beauty of this poem: it teaches and inspires us to accept the good and the bad, the positive and the negative; to allow the possibility that everything is as it should be. And it reminds us each time we read it, because it is so easy to forget. Enjoy~~

The Guest House
by Jellaludin Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.