At noon on the last day of July I got to pick them. I’ve been waiting and watching for a couple weeks, ever since my friend invited me to help myself. “Nobody here,” he said, “is going to pick them.” He drove me around the place in his golf cart to show me where they hid. Then we waited. And today was the day. A hot one, and dry. The berries looked like jeweled globes, and my mouth watered at the mere thought of their tart juice exploding on my tongue. I reached through the tangles of thorny branches, watching the ripe ones fall into my hand at the slightest touch, the sun white and dazzling in my eyes, birds telling each other that a woman was down there picking berries. But she was leaving some. They made me laugh. I filled my bowl. “You don’t get to pick wild blackberries very many times in your life,” I told my friend, thanking him for the fine adventure. “Especially at high noon on the very last day of July.”
Queen Anne spreads her ivory lace across the meadows, her black-red ruby proclaiming her right to rule. The grasses bow to her fragrance. The clover rises to applaud. The sky sends popcorn clouds to mirror her beauty. Ebony wasps and iridescent flies buzz their joy, and all the meadow sings. Oh, how the meadow sings!
The seasons don’t follow our calendar. They have one of their own. In theirs, it’s not here one day, gone the next. It’s more like a spiraling flow, the ending of one song blending into the next, changing its tone, introducing a new theme. A note here and there, a phrase, a fragrance, a measure of unexpected heat or cold alerts you if you are awake to such things. Here, in late July, the tree of heaven is showing off thick clumps of rosy, ripening seeds and the corn is tall in the fields.
It’s not clear at first what is real, what is dream, what is fog, what is hilltop, what is cloud, what is sky. Illusion rolls into illusion. Let it be. The dawn requires no naming, no interpretation. It carries its own light. Watch. Listen. Breathe.
It’s early afternoon as I climb the slope. This morning two doe ascended this very trail and the woods, now silent, save for the barking of a dog on the other side of the valley, were filled with birdsong, I had a conversation with the cardinal. We often chat. Birds nap, or so I think, mid-day. I’ve long thought them wise. I like to picture them cradled in this green, a gentle breeze rocking them, dreaming little birdie dreams. I place my steps softly, lest I disturb them. I rest at the base of the ancient tree I call Mother Maple. She stands near the crown of the slope her broad limbs raised in celebration to the sky regardless of the season. She has a fine view. I pat her trunk with my open palm, her life force flowing into me bright as the afternoon sun and as warm, as glad. She is why I climbed. Just to say an up-close hello on this lush, warm day in late July.
A while back, a friend of mine said, “I don’t know why you bother writing that stuff. Nobody does any of those things anyway.” That was, I knew, probably close to the truth of the matter. How many hundreds of books and articles had I read without taking action?
But I knew, too, that just because somebody doesn’t take action right now doesn’t mean they never will. Seeds grow roots and sprout in their own right time. Besides, learning about ways to live a happier, more satisfying life at least gives you hope that it’s possible.
One of my favorite quotes about making life-alterations is this one: “If you want to change your life, you have to change your life.” Think about that for a minute. It’s the very crux of the problem. We’re comfortable where we are, for better or for worse, and learning new patterns doesn’t come easily. It means having to let go of a familiar pattern to make room for the new one. The new pattern is scary; it’s the unknown, after all. It sets our nerves to tingling just a bit.
So to be honest, I don’t expect that many of you actually set an intention to be happier, or tried looking ahead at your day before you got out of bed, imagining what it would feel like to be happy as you did each thing you expected to do. And that’s okay. The seed is planted.
I have a bigger seed for you this week. It’s one with a tougher shell. It goes by the unpopular name “Accountability.” But hold on—this isn’t the kind of accountability where you’re held responsible by some stern external authority. It’s a whole lot more inviting than that, and it’s what powers your intention to be happier. Here’s how happiness researchers Foster and Hicks describe it:
“The brand of accountability that happy people talk about . . . is a feeling that we are in charge of our own lives and that no one else has power over us. It’s honoring our right to craft a life for ourselves that is rewarding, rich and exuberant. It’s the assumption that no matter what life presents we have the ability to move ahead—to do something good for ourselves, to make a difference, to have an effect.”
Here’s what it means. Even under the most difficult circumstances, you refuse to see yourself as a victim. YOU are in charge of your life. You give up blaming other people or circumstances or events—past or present. You give up complaining that they are the cause of your misery or discontent. Instead, you forge ahead, taking whatever actions you can to improve the quality of your life, here and now. And that can be as easy as remembering to smile.
The tough shell that encases this power seed is the necessity to become aware of when you’re blaming someone or something else for your lack of happiness, or of blaming something that happened in the past. What happened in the past is passed. It’s not here now, except in the form of a repeated story that you tell yourself (and probably tell others) as a ‘reason’ why you’re limited and miserable.
Blame serves no purpose, Foster and Hicks point out. It doesn’t ever get us what we truly desire.
One way to overcome blaming is to ask yourself, “What was my part in it? How can I change things? What can I learn from this experience?”
Key times to look for a tendency to blame is when you’re becoming defensive, or when you’re feeling envy, or jealousy, or resentment. Questioning the part you played in the situation gives you the power to move through it authentically instead of getting mired in needing other people to be different than they are. Catch yourself wanting to put all the blame outside yourself and then ask, “Is this how I want to be? Is this really the response that’s going to solve things?”
Accountability is honoring your right to make choices, choices that align with your intention to be the most contented, capable, authentic person you are capable of being, choices for happiness.
I wish you a week of willingness to let go of defensiveness and blame and to embrace control of your responses to life in their stead.
You’ll deserve some fun as a reward, so next week we’ll hunt for the things that delight you.
Here, in this transitory moment, is everything you need to know. The whole story. All the answers. Take it in. Let it find its home in you. Taste its flavors. Feel its song. Know its peace.
Two fireflies danced through the woods last night, the sight all the more precious now that their season has reached its final days. Overhead, the first evening stars sparkled against a dark velvet sky whose western horizon still glowed with a deep orange gold. I slept in the sweetness of perfumed air that carried the songs of crickets and frogs. Then, when I woke, the world had been transformed, the night’s twinkling lights exchanged for a shimmer of dew, its tiny globes sparkling from every emerald blade of grass. Such gifts, so freely given! These wondrous, velvet nights, and all the glistening mornings.
Okay, summer; you win. I admit that at first I was put off by your incessant rains. And when they ceased, I didn’t trust your dazzle, seeing it as so much show, an act. But now you have convinced me. Your sincerity is everywhere, deep in its greens, devoted in its endless display of color. And at last your warmth has penetrated my understanding, and I want nothing more than to sink into your loving emerald arms.
The creek, despite our abundant rains, is surprisingly dry, its rocky bed exposed along the shore and making islands in its center. Still, sheltered as it is by the wooded hills, it cools its surrounds and sings its quiet song. And here and there, where the light rolls down and falls beneath its surface, you can see its clarity.
Light does that. Its radiant energy rolls all the way from the sun, down through the millions of miles of space, through the layers of atmosphere and cloud, past the thick canopy of dancing leaves and through the slow whispering waters until it finds earth, bouncing off everything on its way, flowing right into your eyes to show you clearly the truth of what’s there, the Yes of all the things that were hidden in shadow before it came, rolling down.