Susan Minarik – Page 119 – Notes from the Woods

Looking Differently

This week I noticed that chicory was blossoming on the roadside now. I’ve never been particularly fond of it, despite the lovely blue of its flowers. As it it were up to me to judge, I considered the flowers too sparsely spaced on its lanky stems.

Still, it was a marker of the season’s march. And now, here it was, dotting the roadside along with the Queen Anne’s lace and the wild daylilies. I should, I decided, take its picture.

The day I chose to do it was filled with rain until well into the afternoon, and the blossoms had curled inward in a gesture of self-protection. Something about that touched me. I felt a little wave of tenderness wash over me as I hunted for one that had dared to open.

When I found one and focused my camera’s lens on it, I discovered a design far more intriguing than I ever would have imagined. And I walked away with an appreciative smile, grateful for the revelation that looking closely brought me.

Sometimes looking at something differently is all it takes to see in it a treasure that you never suspected was there. The key is to be open to appreciation, to holding an openness to being surprised by wonder, or compassion, or admiration, or delight.

Appreciation for beauty or excellence is one of the character strengths I’ve been mentioning in my last few letters. This quality of appreciation is also described as a capacity for awe, that ethereal feeling that comes when you see how truly something approaches perfection, how it’s just right, exactly as it is.

When we open yourself to being appreciative, everything–and everyone– holds potential for bringing us joy. At the very least, we begin to see how everything is working toward fulfilling its purpose, even when it currently seems to be falling far short. Even when it isn’t as we, personally, would prefer it to be.

Sometimes, as I said, it’s just a matter of looking at things differently. Instead of looking at what’s wrong or upsetting, we can open ourselves to finding what’s good, what’s right, what effort is being made. We can set aside our judgment and our preferences and look to see more of what is there. We can look closer, or from a different angle. We can consider things from a higher perspective, or from one that takes into account the context, or at where things are in terms of their development in time.

A five-year-old’s performance at a dance recital won’t hold the same kind of beauty as that of an accomplished ballerina. But appreciation for it can transform it into one of the dearest things you’ve ever seen.

The old man’s hands may be wrinkled and gnarled. But you can see in them a lifetime of work.

The rioter setting a storefront ablaze may fill us with anger, but we can stand farther off and appreciate his passion and pain and be moved to do what we can to make our nation a more just and virtuous one.

We can learn to appreciate life’s difficult and distressing times for the insights they bring about what we can do, minute by minute, to strive for more harmony, compassion, and excellence in our own lives.

Appreciation teaches us to look within as well as without, to discover what’s good and beautiful about ourselves, and to decide to share those things more fully with the world. So appreciate your kindness, your sense of humor, your discipline, your creativity, your smile. Appreciate your talents and skills, your determination, your honesty, your generosity, your thrift, your faith.

Really. Take the time to do that. Hold open a willingness to see what’s good in you. And treat yourself to appreciating the goodness and beauty and excellence that surrounds you. It’s always there. Sometimes, as the chicory taught me, it’s just a matter of looking at things differently.

A Higher View

Looking down on the creek from the bridge, you can see so much more than when you stand on its banks, peering through the tangle of weeds and trees.

You can watch the water flow from far upstream, skirt the little island, dance around the rocks or bubble over them. You can see its shallows and its depths and understand how both are a part of it all, and how the creek and the rocks and the trees are all a part of some great conversation that includes it all.

You can watch the water flow downstream, wiser with every meter, richer with stories than it ever was before.

It’s sort of like us.

What often looks so narrow and tangled becomes so beautiful and whole when you take a higher view.

The American Way

Every July 4^th, when I was a teen, I’d sprawl on our living room floor and read the Declaration of Independence. It was something important to us in those days. It was a kind of sacred national document.

Back then, we studied our founding documents. We talked about what they meant. They made us proud; they gave us a sense of purpose. We believed that the liberty and justice they described was intended for all, that we, as a diverse people, coming together from all the corners of the earth, were at work creating a nation that exemplified the best of humankind. We sang “America the Beautiful” as if it was our national hymn.

It was a different world back then. TV was new to homes and it didn’t stay on 24 hours a day. It signed off at night with an inspirational verse, or a clip of an fighter plane soaring through the sky while the Air Force Hymn played, or a ship plowing through the sea as the Navy choir sang “Anchors Aweigh. Finally, an inspirational picture of the American flag blowing in the wind filled the screen while the national anthem played. And with that in our minds, we went to bed.

At school, we were taught that our flag meant something, too. It stood for freedom. Every classroom had one standing at the front of the room. Before our classes began, we would stand together facing it, our hands over our hearts, as we repeated the pledge of allegiance. We were proud to do that, and honored to be Americans. We didn’t take the privilege lightly. Men and women had given their lives, after all, so that we could be free.

We learned what freedom meant. We had neighbors who spoke to each other in languages we couldn’t understand, but who talked to us and to our parents in English. They would tell us what it was like not to be free, to have to hide your ideas, guard your speech, keep your cultural heritage, your literature and music, your customs, your religious beliefs and celebrations, a secret or face terrible punishments, maybe even death. That’s why they came here. That’s why they respected the beliefs and ideas of others, and why we children were taught to respect differences, too.

We didn’t go around screaming for diversity and tolerance. We were diverse. We looked at the cultures and customs of other nationalities and races with interest and fascination, as wonderful expressions of the human race, as something to be appreciated, even as we appreciated our own.

People could get into heated arguments over their ideas. But they seldom came to blows. And if they did, once they had cooled down, they apologized to each other and went on being neighbors or co-workers or friends, The motto everyone abided by was “I might disagree with what you are saying, but I will fight for your right to say it.” It was the motto that everyone knew. We were taught that freedom of speech was an unalienable right. We understood that listening to the ideas of others expanded and deepened our own thinking and could open our minds to fresh ways of seeing things.

Back then, we had heroes who stood for our ideals, too. Superman would fly across the screen of our black and white TV sets while his theme song played and a strong, deep voice proclaimed that he fought for “truth, justice, and the American way.”

The American way meant that everybody was free to become the best person he or she could be. A man or woman could set a goal and work toward its achievement in any way that didn’t step on another person’s freedom. We valued initiative, inventiveness, ambition, and hard work.

In my heart, I believe the majority of us still feel that way. But over the past couple of decades,insidious forces have been at work to undermine our reverence for our nation and to assail the ideals for which it stands. These forces have infiltrated our media, our entertainment, our educational, legal, and governmental systems. Knowing that division weakens us, they have sought to divide us by religion, race, sex, political affiliation and class. They have set us at odds with each other and created an atmosphere of hostility and fear.

And the time has come for us to stand. The time has come for us to rededicate ourselves to this precious Republic and to the values for which it stands—for freedom, for brotherhood, for prosperity and security for all. It’s time for us to determine to be a force for good in the world, to shine the light of freedom across the globe.

From a joy-warrior’s point of view, that means we need to make a renewed dedication to focusing on the things that bring harmony and thriving to our personal spheres. We need to look for the goodness and beauty and truth around us, and to speak it, and live it as fully as we can, in whatever ways we can. We need to remember that we are all in this world together. We’re all a part of the human family. And each us can choose to strive to be our very best. For me, that, truly, is the American way.

What a Piece of Work

On the bulletin board above my desk I keep a list of strengths. It’s been there for years, and to tell you the truth, I haven’t read through it in ages.

Last week I promised you I would share the list with you today. So I unpinned it, held it in my hands and started to read through it. It’s old, familiar material for me, and at first, I just scanned it. But I was less than a third of the way through the list when the profundity of it stuck me.

A passage from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” floated into my mind: “What a piece of work is a man . . . the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

That may be an overstatement. But when you consider all the achievements of the human race—a worthwhile thing to think about now and then—you have to admit that we are indeed remarkable creatures.

This isn’t a casually created list. To identify these characteristics, the team who created it looked at the histories and literature of cultures around the world from ancient times to the present. What traits did we, as human beings, value most highly? What characteristics contributed the most to our personal sense of well-being and to the well-being of our cultures?

The twenty-four traits on this list are the result of their research.

I slowed down and read them carefully, letting myself feel the quality of each item. I suggest that you read them that way, too. Savor them. Taste the flavor of each of them. These are the qualities that mark the best in us as human beings.

As individuals, we possess them in varying degrees. We’re all strong in some of them and not particularly gifted in others. When you read through the list, you’ll notice which ones resonate the most with you. It’s the ones that strike a chord in you that are probably your own best strengths, the parts of you that you express when you feel good about who you are and how you’re doing things.

And that’s a good thing. We’re more successful overall when we’re using our best strengths. They serve as a kind of compass to tell us when we’re on the right track, when we’re being true to who we, as unique individuals, are.

So here is the list, in alphabetical order. Take time to read it, to feel it, to let it bring you insights about yourself, and about all of us. Pick out your favorites and play with seeing them at work in your life as you go through the week. Look for these qualities in others, too. It will lead you to greater appreciation for them and enjoy their unique individuality.

Appreciation Beauty and Excellence, Awe

Bravery, Courage

Creativity, Ingenuity

Critical Thinking, Open-Mindedness, Good Judgment

Curiosity, Interest

Fairness

Forgiveness, Mercy

Gratitude, Thankfulness

Honesty, Authenticity

Hope, Optimism

Kindness, Generosity

Leadership

Love, Attachment

Love of Learning

Modesty, Humility

Perseverance, Persistence, Diligence, Industriousness

Perspective, Wisdom

Playfulness, Humor

Prudence, Discretion, Caution

Religiousness, Spirituality

Self-Control, Self-Regulation

Social Intelligence, Social Skills, Understand Motives of Others

Teamwork

Zest, Enthusiasm

A Tale About a Great Character

A new friend was telling me how important he believed it is to be positive. I heartily agreed of course and told him I had spent a few years writing about positive psychology on a blog I had for a while. I explained that positive psychology was the study of what makes us whole, happy, thriving human beings.

“And what are the things that do that for us?” he asked. I told him that it seemed to boil down to discovering your best traits and building on them. Positive psychology, I told him, calls these traits your character strengths.

I hadn’t thought about the list of character strengths for a while, but they floated into my awareness again today when I was thinking about my dad. Today is “Father’s Day” here in the States, and as I was recalling the things I loved about my dad, I realized how many strengths he embodied.

The first one that came to mind was his wonderful sense of humor. He loved to laugh and to tell stories that brought laughter to other people, too. That was definitely one of his top strengths. I think it’s what saved him. His life wasn’t an easy one. He had plenty of reasons to fall into despair, to think of himself as a victim of unfair circumstances, a loser in the lottery of life.

But he would have none of that. He looked, instead, for life’s goodness, for the things that were juicy with beauty and friendship and love.

He was industrious, too, a hard worker. He would take on any task that would make things work better or contribute something constructive to the world around him. And he would stick to it until he was satisfied with the result.

Dad had a zest for life. He was open to whatever came along, ready to meet new experiences with enthusiasm.

He loved learning, too. He was always reading something and he would dig for weeks to find answers to questions that popped into his mind. Only one time did he have a question that went unanswered. “You know that guy you see flying around on a magic carpet?” he would ask people. Everybody knew the image. “What was his name?” Dad would ask. Nobody knew. The ladies at the library couldn’t even find the answer. Dad finally gave up on that one. He said he’d just call him Sam.

He was generous, and kind, and hopeful and optimistic.

He had a great big heart.

All of those traits of his are strengths. Character strengths, to be precise. They’re the things that let us be good people. The positive psychologists had identified two dozen of them last time I checked. I’ll share the list with you next week. It’s fun to think about which ones are most important to you. Usually the ones you value the most are the ones that are strongest in your own personality. Once you identify them, you can use them as tools for tackling whatever challenges come your way. And the best part is, when you learn to build on your best ones, the rest of them increase in strength, too.

I can see how that worked in my dad’s life. His willingness to laugh gave him a perspective that developed into a genuine wisdom the permeated every aspect of his life. I feel so lucky to have had him as my dad.

Dad’s matter. If you are a father, I salute you today. If you are the child of a loving father, or have had a strong father-figure in your life, I share with you the incredible feeling of knowing you have truly been blessed.

Sleepless Nights

It is not quite 5 am, and I wake to a fragment of dream that shoots an arrow of pain through my heart.

I turn on my laptop to see if there is any news. Of course there is news. Events are flowing past now at warp speed. But I am looking for something particular. I’m not sure what it is; but if I see it, I will recognize it.

My email is full of offers. They seem quaint somehow, shreds from a vanishing world that is sinking into a sea of confusion, fear, anger, and pain. The suffering speaks in countless tongues through the posts I read on Twitter:

“I’ve cried uncontrollably all week. Life doesn’t seem worth living. If you believe in prayer, I could use a few. My nickname is JoJo. Thank you ahead of time. I’ve lost all my mental strength.”

“My brothers and sisters, I’ve been drinking ALOT lately and my kids are worried. I think I’m addicted so I’m putting it out there. Maybe if I answer to my family it will be incentive to quit. I love my kids so much but my nightmares really make me struggle.”

I sigh, and look up from my computer screen. The sky outside my window is glowing red as the sun pushes toward the top of the eastern hills. Just above the horizon, a layer of clear gold shines beneath the vivid clouds. “Joy,” a voice whispers in my mind as I gaze at the scene and I hear a small laugh escape from my mouth.

“You picked one heck of a time to be a joy-warrior,” I say to myself. “You have your work cut out for you, for sure.” But I am looking out the window, and the clouds are thinning as they rise, and light begins to wash across the hills. The metaphor is clear. I decide to make a cup of coffee. Whatever the day may bring I will welcome.

Everything has meaning. Everything comes to teach, to guide.

Even the darkness has its gifts, even the pain. The No points the way to the Yes. The key is to remember not to fight against, but to fight for.

Remember to ask yourself the right questions:
What soothes? What comforts? What brings laughter? What encourages and inspires?
Where does strength lie? Where is the goodness, the beauty, the truth? What frees?
What are the hidden opportunities? What is the better choice? What is the next best step?

Then listen, and wait for the answers to rise.
They will. We have more wisdom within us than we know.

When the world is in turmoil, listening can be hard. We get entangled in the strands of pain flying all around us. The clouds of uncertainty are thick and deep. The No seems to be screaming from every direction. It threatens our hope and attacks our faith. It keeps us from our sleep.

But always, no matter how dark the night, morning dawns. And beyond the clouds, the sky is infinite and clear. Be open to it, however heavy your heart may be, for it contains gifts for you. Always. Even when you do not immediately understand them. Listen to the Yes of it, follow its song. It will show you your direction and light your way.

Nights, even the sleepless ones, only last so long.

Even the Smallest Breathing

In last week’s letter I mentioned my friend in West Africa. I want to tell you more about him today.

His name is Modoulamin, and he lives on the outskirts of Brikama, one of the few large cities in the nation of The Gambia. He’s twenty years old.

Our conversation began in early March when he responded to a post I made on a social media site, and before long, we became friends, exchanging messages almost daily. I was guarded and cautious, being well aware of online scams. But our exchange was cordial, and he asked nothing from me. He told me about his family and his country and asked about mine.

His English wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to understand for the most part. He came across as a warm, direct, and remarkably intelligent young man. Only later would I l see how remarkable he truly is. He had made it through the 10^th level of school, he said. Then his life took quite a turn. His father disappeared.

Out of sympathy for his circumstances, his school allowed him to continue for a while. But given its own limited resources, the extension of time came to an end, along with his education. He wanted to be a tailor, he said.

The family never learned what happened to the father. Modoulamin’s mother was pregnant when he disappeared, and shortly after the birth of her child, she contracted malaria and died. It was a devastating loss, and it left seventeen-year-old Modoulamin as the head of the household, with a newborn, three siblings ranging in age from two through twelve, and a grandmother to care for.

Raising enough money to provide food for all of them was a great challenge, and soon the family found themselves homeless. They remained homeless for three years. Only a month ago were they able to rent a humble house, with no electricity or water, that serves as shelter.

To support them, Modoulamin walks for two hours each day to a forest where he chops wood to sell at the market so he can buy rice and, if he’s lucky, maybe some small fish and vegetables for their meal. Then he walks home, exhausted, and tends to duties there.

He sent me a photo someone took of him drawing water in a bucket from a stone well to fill a large plastic jug. It would have been, I thought, very heavy to carry. In another photo, he showed me the children sleeping in a huddle inside a torn mosquito netting draped from the limb of a scrawny tree.

“Here we don’t have a tent. We just sleep like this, and at night it is cold, and we have many mosquitoes that cause malaria, which easily kill people,” he said. And the mosquitoes weren’t the only threat. Thieves sometimes killed the homeless, too, just to take their food or money.

When they finally moved into the little house, Modoulamin told me it was the first time the three year old had ever slept under a roof.

Life for him is tedious, an endless struggle to keep his family together and alive. But he perseveres. “Family love is the strongest love,” he told me.

When the corona virus made it to his country, it went into lockdown. Now soldiers were guarding the forest, and to go there would mean a beating and arrest. Meanwhile, Grandmother injured her foot and it became infected, compounding what seemed to be symptoms of malaria. Only with the charity of friends have they been able to survive.

“Such is life, Susan,” Modoulamin said. “God will decide what will happen. But as humans, we have to consider each other’s life and value it as the greatest asset.” This! From a 20-year-old!

The one thing Modoulamin’s parents left to him was their life-long dream. They wanted the family to have their own patch of land, where they could construct a shelter and put in a garden so they could be safe and have food. They worked for it for over twenty years without success, and their dream burns with a passion in Modoulamin’s heart.

This past week, someone in town put a small plot of land up for sale. It’s cheap for the area, only $8,000, near the market, away from the criminal threat, and it has electricity available. If he could buy it, Modoulamin said, he could construct a shelter and the children could work a garden, and he would be able to extend his range in search of work that would provide a dependable living. “Always,” he told me, “I think about how can I get the children into school.”

He hasn’t slept for days, wracking his brain for some way to raise such an impossible sum of money. Was there anything I could do, he asked, knowing that my own circumstances are barely sufficient to cover my needs. Land is demand. He would need to act soon before the opportunity is lost. Did I have any ideas?

To Modoulamin, and to me, $8,000 sounds like eight million. Plus, he tells me, he would need several thousand more to build a protective wall around it. But every day I read about donations far larger being made to causes far less worthy than that of helping my brave and humble young friend achieve his precious dream.

I have set up a GoFundMe page for him now. Maybe it will keep the family fed, pay the rent on the humble shelter he managed to secure, and keep his internet connection intact while he saves toward his dreams.

He uses the Net to work on his education. He’s registered to take classes for his West African Secondary School Education Certificate, and he and I are working together to help him earn his GED. He learned clothing construction in school and loves to design and create clothes. He would like to make that a career.

I know we have around us so many in desperate straits right now. But I think of the starfish story. Remember it?

A young boy was tossing stranded and suffocating starfish into the ocean after a large wave swept them far onto the sand. “You can’t save all those starfish!” a passing man said to him.

“I know,” the boy answered, flinging one into the water. “But I can save this one.”

Maybe Modoulamin can be our starfish. I figure If enough of you reading this toss in a contribution, maybe his whole family can be free to swim. He would do everything in his power to build good lives for them all. And if we can’t raise enough to purchase the little plot of land, at least we might be able to provide him with enough to rent a house for a time. The rainy season is coming.

I told him I would ask you, but that I could make no promises.

“No matter what, we have to be grateful for what we have” he said. “Even the smallest breathing from God is a blessing.”

Please help if you can. And even if you can give no more than your prayers, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Warmly,
Susan

Use Your Words

Like you, I am greeting the morning with a heavy heart. The events unfolding before us are stunning, to say the least. Who would have believed we would see so much violence, destruction and pain erupt so suddenly to engulf our entire nation!

A friend of mine in West Africa messaged me to ask if I was okay. He had heard about the troubles and that they were racist in origin. I assured him that I was well and not in any immediate danger. I told him there is a phrase, “fog of war,” that means things are very confused when violent events are unfolding, and that we are wise not to leap to conclusions or cast early blame. Especially when events are as large as this, the causes are complex and multi-layered and will take time to sort out.

Then I told him a story a neighbor told me. She and her husband had gone to a nearby town on some errands today. It’s a small town of about 9,000, with a racially mixed population with low to medium incomes for the most part. On the grassy median that divides the main street, my friend told me, a white woman was holding a sign that said, “Free Food,” and a couple black women were handing boxes of groceries and produce to anyone who asked for it. That’s the America I know and believe in.

Even in the midst of the riots that are raging in our cities, I have seen videos of people coming to the aid of those in need–protecting them, offering comfort, working in teams to clean up debris. At our core, that’s who we are, and we will see Americans of every stripe step forward in the days ahead, coming together to rebuild and restore.

It won’t be easy. We are, after all, still coping with the pandemic, and we have no idea what course it will run in the days ahead. And we need to create a unifying vision to bridge all the rifts that have divided us on so many fronts.

One thing we can all certainly agree on is that violence and destruction offer no solutions. No matter how much frustration or anger we are feeling, we need to find creative and constructive ways to deal with each other.

Another friend of mine told me a story that holds one key to how we can do that. One of his relatives has a toddler who is still in his “terrible twos.” He wants what he wants, and he wants it now, and he screams when he doesn’t get it. He’s sort of a microcosm of what’s going on in our society. His mom, as it turns out, is a very smart woman. When he begins to get upset, she tells him, “Use your words. Use your words.” That’s what we all need to learn to do right now–to find the words to say what we want, to express to each other what we need and to talk together about we can help each other meet our needs.

In the meantime, we need to remember that all of us are suffering. We need to exercise patience with each other. And above all, we need to make every effort to be kind.

We’re all part of the human family. We all want peace, however strained it may be from time to time. And the only place peace can begin is within each of our hearts. Be kind.

The Diamond Necklace

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck.” ~Rumi

It’s the lesson I’m learning again and again as I practice being a joy-warrior: Joy is always right here. And the only that keeps me from seeing it is the cloud of stories I stir up as I trip into one of life’s potholes. I’ve learned how it works. You hit a bump and a little wash of emotional discomfort seeps into your system. To explain it, your mind pulls out a story you have associated with the feeling in the past. Focusing on the story, you generate more of the associated feelings and fill in more details of the story, and round and round you go until reality interrupts.

I’ll tell you the most embarrassing instance of this that I remember. I was sitting on the couch in my living room remembering an argument I had the night before with a friend. I was still mad, and I revived the argument in my head, getting madder by the minute, arguing more. Finally I decided I needed a cup of coffee and I went to the kitchen and poured two cups, one for me and one for my friend, still arguing all the time. Not until I walked back into the living room with the cups of coffee in my hands did I realize my friend wasn’t even there. The whole argument was nothing more than a figment of my imagination. To my credit, I remember laughing at myself as I realized the reality of the situation.

I was looking for the diamond necklace. In this case, it was a desire for restored peace between my friend and me. And the fact was our friendship was as secure and sparkling as it had ever been. I had allowed the memory of one little argument to catch me up in a story that I built into a a blinding war. In truth, it didn’t matter that his opinion was different than mine. We loved each other anyway. Our friendship was big enough to accommodate some differences.

Life handed me another exercise in remembering my diamond necklace this morning. It wasn’t nearly as drastic. I simply woke to a piece of irritating news and was stewing over it as I went to the kitchen to start breakfast. But outside my windows, the azalea’s bright pink blossoms were glowing against the fresh green world beyond it, and suddenly a little hummingbird appeared and darted from blossom to blossom. No mere story could stand against such a sight. Joy was right there, right that very moment. All I had to do was let in its radiant light.

That’s always the case. It’s only our stories that get in the way of remembering our joy , the tales we spin in our mind, roaming from room to roam, looking for the diamond’s sparkle when its with us all the time. This week I ran across a little set of instructions for getting to the space where the diamonds shine. It’s from an ancient Indian teacher named Tilopa. Here’s what he says: “Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don’t try to figure anything out. Don’t try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest.”

I wrote the words “Let go of what is happening now” on a card and set it on my desk. Seeing it, I smile. It’s such a gift when reminders come along, isn’t it?

May you find them dropping into your life this week like gentle flower petals. And may your diamonds always shine.

A Breath of Fresh Air

The clouds were heavy and low and had been hanging overhead for days. Whether they were a mirror of my mood or I was mirroring them, I didn’t know. But I was stuck in a world of negativity, feeling oppressed, obsessed with the darkness, railing against it, forgetting how to be free, or even that freedom from it was possible.

Then, one morning, after a stormy night, I woke to sound of a bird singing from a branch outside my window, and I opened my eyes to see the sun rising into a clear, blue sky from a horizon drenched in gold. It startled me. And all at once I realized it had been there all along, this clarity, this light, just beyond the clouds.

From the time I was a child, nature has been my teacher. I grew up on the shores of the vast Saginaw Bay in Michigan, and one of the first lessons I learned was the one the waves taught me. Life has a rhythm, a constant washing in of waves. Sometimes they’re slow and gentle. Sometimes they rage and crash against the shore. But it’s always a dance, always in motion. And I was like the shore, a partner in the dance, responding the rhythms and moods of the waves, whatever they might be, harmonizing with them, and welcoming them, for they always brought gifts.

The midweek sunrise reminded me of that again. Storms end. Above the clouds, the sky is clear and sparkling with light.

Like everybody else, I fall prey to fighting against the clouds that engulf us from time to time. I forget that they have a purpose. Their darkness pulls us into ourselves, to experience the darkness within, to find the judgments and pain that are obstacles to our joy so that we may understand and release them.

That’s the key to freeing yourself from negativity’s oppression. You have to accept that it comes to you with gifts, to sit down with it and ask it what it has come to show you, what it needs from you, what it is asking you to see and understand.

On the morning when the sun returned to my life, I looked back on the clouds that were disappearing into the night to see what gifts they had left behind. Where had my thoughts been focused while they were oppressing me? What was it they wanted me to see and understand?

I had, they told me, been battling against, instead of reaching for.

Oh.

That was quite true.

I thanked them, and sheepishly smiled, glad for the reminder, rolling my eyes over the fact that this was a lesson I seemed to need to revisit again and again and again. Then I laughed. Such is the life of a joy-warrior.

But at least, for this beautiful morning, I was seeing the sunlight once more, and breathing in the springtime’s fresh air. I would take this day, I vowed, to be joyful, and grateful, and glad, and to share its light with kindness and a smile for whomever it brought my way.

Today, that’s you. And I look into your eyes and tell you, “Life is good.” Trust that, No matter what.