Suddenly, September plunks herself down in the meadow. She spills Queen Anne’s Lace and goldenrod everywhere. It’s not that she was unexpected, but I had pushed her way over there in my mind since she signals the advent of the cold half of the year. Now here I am, knee deep in late summer wildflowers, glad despite myself, the child in me dancing giddily to the shrill sawing of ten thousand crickets and handsome insects everywhere, feasting. “It’s another whole corner of heaven!” the dancing child shouts, and my wrinkled face smiles.
As if in benediction, one last lily blossomed today, its petals a delicate pink, its center shades of lemon and lime, glowing with an internal light. Six stamens, also glowing, rose from its heart bearing offerings of gold, in thanks, I believe, for the privilege of being. I kneel before it to peer into its face, to take in its silent song. This is the garden’s last blossom. Now the wildflowers will sing their autumn songs and I will dance to their bright tunes. But here, before this lily, I am, for a long while, silent. And at last, all I can do is dare to stroke its petals as I whisper my grateful farewell.
What was that? You wanted butterflies? Let me whisper a secret: So did I. Those wafers of color darting through the flowers, turning happy somersaults in the summer air, basking in the sun. And let’s wish that each flower is sweeter for them than the last one and that each moment of their lives is filled with overflowing joy.
May the bees be blessed, for they are under assault as much as we. May flowers, rich in sweet nectar and deep with pollen, invite them, laughing, and may both the bees and flowers thrive, and us, too, in a world where light dances everywhere and we dine on rich honey and drink the gold of the sun.
“Congratulations on another day!” the radio host said. I don’t think I ever heard that before, but it certainly resonated with me. I deserved congratulations for keeping my balance so well despite a spate of disruptive events in my life.
As you may have noticed, I haven’t been online for a bit of a stretch. For years now I’ve been heard to utter, “Technology is so wonderful when it works.” This was one of those times when it didn’t. I was in Internet Connection Hell. But valiant knights swarmed in to rescue me, and they were fine, determined men, knowledgeable and most courteous. Still, it took many days to get to the root of the problem.
And it wasn’t just that. My cook top and washing machine died, too, all in the span of a couple days. Meanwhile, close friends were going through difficult personal struggles, and the horrific tragedy unfolding in Maui was breaking my heart.
In the midst of all this, I began to appreciate how valuable all my joy-warrior training has been. It allowed me to keep a perspective as unexpected circumstances pushed me from my accustomed routines. We do like our habits, especially the ones that let us go through our days with some order, efficiency and grace. It annoys us when they’re disturbed.
Still, I noticed, I was surprisingly unperturbed by fairly major interruptions to the usual patterns of my life. I recognized that they were posing some significant challenges. I would have to deal with the hassle and cost of getting service, repairs and replacements. Until I got back online, much of my usual work would have to wait.
But I simultaneously recognized that being upset would only make dealing with everything more difficult. And I saw that understanding as a great gift, one that I had given myself by “walking the talk,” by finding and exercising the practices that lead to enhanced ease and joy. Instead of letting events devastate me, or hurl me into a pity pool, a heartfelt wave of gratitude washed over me for the peace and confidence I felt as, one step at a time, I navigated the challenges.
In a world where things frequently go differently than we wish them to go, it takes practice to keep a balanced perspective. Maintaining inner peace, which is what joy is all about, is a skill as much as an art, or a personality trait, or a product of a healthy upbringing. You need to practice it, to find ways to nurture and grow it. And that’s what the joy tools I find and enjoy sharing with you are meant to do – to help us learn to operate from a center of peace regardless of what circumstances surround us.
I’m always on the lookout for ways to build my joy skills. So when the guy on the radio said, “Congratulations on another day,” and it made me grin, I wrote the sentence down and taped it to my bathroom mirror as an experiment, to see what effects it would produce. It seemed to me a fine thing to say to myself at the end of the day – or at its start, for that matter. It wasn’t about accomplishing anything, or about being a certain way. It was just about being. Period. You’re here. Conscious. Experiencing. Despite all the odds. Congratulations!
My challenges were what they were, I decided, and the rest of the world remained as my laboratory and playground. Acceptance is always such a fine first step.
Then my curiosity kicked in: What would I do with the time I couldn’t spend as I normally did?
I pulled an old set of instructions from my mind’s files that said, “When you don’t know what to do, clean or create.” I decided to start by creating a list of things I could do with this sudden appearance of free time. After all, free time is a great gift when you think about it.
I’m pleased to say that I accomplished a host of worthwhile projects, and had fun doing it. Despite it all. One night while I was wrapping up a journal entry about my responses that day to my restructured world, I found myself writing, “Life is rich.” And so it is. And we get to live it.
Carry on, my friends, and remember to look for the good, regardless. Oh, and Congratulations on another day!
I do not take this green world for granted. It is the end of August; soon it will be gone. But not yet. Now, here I am in the midst of its healing, feeling it penetrate every cell of my body, absorbing the tones of its song. Winter will be long. May this green become a part of me and feed me through the darkness. May I remember, forever, the bountiousness of this green world, this dancing peace.
Whether flowing through patches of sunlight, or drifting through deep summer shade, whether gliding over rocks and stones, or parting for the slick darting fishes or for the paddling of thick, webbed feet, whether tumbling from heights, or lingering on the flatlands, in rain, in wind, beneath starlight, in snow, the creek has but one guideline: How easy can I let this be?
Even though the cloudy sky subdued them, the colors of the meadow caught my eye. How subtly, I thought, the seasons change, the Black-Eyed-Susans giving way to goldenrod, the daisies bowing to the Queen Anne’s lace. Already the green of the trees is beginning to move into shades of olive here and there. So I let this flower-strew field paint itself into my heart, a portrait of summer at its turning point, a reminder to cherish each moment’s beauty, those past and those that the moment hints will come, and most of all, and always, this one, before my eyes right now.
You never know when you start out what your journey will bring. Anything you can imagine is possible, and then some. It’s all a gift, you know, a world for you, to explore your choices, to decide who you will be, to discover what you’re made of. Hold onto your hope and keep your faith, remembering that, regardless, light shines at the end of the road.
Standing in this spot six months ago I could hardly remember that the bleak and frozen landscape could give rise to this, to trees luxuriant with leaves and seeds, to velvety grass, to a field of tasseled corn, to moist warm air, filled with birdsong and the fragrance of summer. And now, standing in this spot, it’s hard to imagine that in a handful of weeks it will again return to sleep beneath heaped blankets of shimmering snow. Yet here is the vision of it, clear in my mind, and of springtime, and autumn as well, the seasons blending into the whole of this now, where crows call and the air is perfumed with summer.
