“I love the watching how the buds on the trees are beginning to swell,” she said, taking me by surprise. I hadn’t noticed. She’s farther south, I said to myself. Surely I would have noticed, the softening of the tree line being one of my favorite late-winter sights.
But the next morning, as I passed a favorite maple, I saw that she spoke truly. It was indeed fuzzier than it had been the week before. Say what you want, Jack Frost. The ancient one in the pasture tells the long-range tale: Spring is coming, regardless.
With all the events filling the news in the past week—the shoot-down of the mysterious Chinese balloon and now of some unidentified object over Alaskan air space, the horrendous and heart-breaking earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, the political tensions both at home and internationally—you might have missed the story about the derailment of a train in Ohio carrying hazardous chemicals. But I sure didn’t! It happened four miles upwind from my home. I could see the black smoke from here.
Last Monday, in order to prevent an explosion of one endangered tank car, authorities decided to conduct a “controlled explosion,” releasing a huge cloud of dense black smoke into the overcast sky. I watched from my kitchen window as the cloud floated toward my property, eventually turning the sky so dark that it looked like midnight outside at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Authorities said air samples said it had posed no danger, but some folks in the area are experiencing headaches and feeling sick. And although I’m generally robustly healthy, I confess I’m not quite 100% myself.
I’m not concerned. My symptoms are mild – a bit of a sore throat. I expect to bounce back quickly. I told myself it’s just a trough in the waves. And that reminded me of a piece I wrote a while back, called “Learning to Surf.” I dug it out and read it. And because the world is what it is these days, I thought I’d share it with you again. . .
Learning to Surf
I admit, it can be hard to get your bearings on this old planet the way everything keeps shifting and sliding and all. The best that any of us can do is to do the best we can, moment to moment to moment.
It’s like the famous poster from the 1960’s where you see a yogi-like figure in long robes on a surfboard riding an enormous wave, his arms outstreched, his wet hair flying in the wind. Across the photo in bold white letters is printed, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
The world is giving us surfing lessons big-time now. And sometimes it feels like high tide. It’s part of the adventure of being here. We get to live all the drama from inside it.
By the way, did you ever watch somebody learn to surf? It isn’t a pretty sight. Or graceful. Or smooth. They fall a lot. Sometimes they get injured. Sometimes they even get killed. That’s the kind of adventure we’re in. We risk death every moment. Threats surround us from our very first breath, from before that even.
But here’s the thing. Most who are learning to surf succeed. They get the hang of it, of the unpredictability of the ride. They get the rhythm and flow of unexpected curves. For some, it becomes a kind of dance or meditation. For some it’s a challenge of skills, a grand game. But you only rise to those levels to the degree that you let go of fear. Most of us are just paddling around as best we can, scared of dying, trying to get enough balance to stand. Our big glory is that when we fall, we climb back on, regardless of our fears and regrets. And these days, that can be one mean feat.
I love that about humans–the way we keep getting back on the board, working at making it work, even against all odds. Even when we have no idea why. God bless us all.
And God bless you, individually—you, who’s reading this letter right now. These are bewildering times. Balance doesn’t come easy for any of us. We’re riding on storm-tossed seas.
It’s okay to be afraid. Useless, but okay. It’s okay to be sad, or angry, or miserable. Just get back on the board and keep paddling. Eventually you’ll rock with the waves, rolling over their crests and into their valleys as if you were born to do it. Because, obviously, you were.
It doesn’t have to make sense. It might be a long while before we’re in calm seas. Life isn’t going to be what we had imagined it would be. But it’s still our life, our chance to ride the waves. Kinda wild, isn’t it? Kinda outrageous.
I want to wrap packets of the peace of this place in gossamer wishes and offer them to the fragrant air to carry to the hearts of all who are in pain this day. May you be filled with the strength of these trees, I say, lifting cupped hands, and with their endurance. May your spirit be filled with the calm of this lake and with its gladness. May these shafts of sunlight remind you that shadows are a part of the dance, passing phantoms, anchored to nothing. This peace floats above and beneath and between all you see. And I send it to you, that you may be healed, that you may be free.
Happiness, I was thinking today, while floating in its midst, is such a simple thing. And yet how hard we work to find it; how we make it so complex. I laughed. It was either that, or cry. It was so plain, in this silken moment, that happiness isn’t something you strive to obtain as much as something into which you relax. We don’t increase our experience of it by adding more things, or drama, or complications to our lives, but by releasing the things that stand in its way. We don’t have to dig for it, or climb towards it, or run after it with a net. We can simply breathe. We don’t have to hunt it down; it’s everywhere. We don’t have to build or create it; it already is. Right here. Right now. Like air. Like light. It’s not something we have to earn, or win, or deserve. It’s already ours, given to us as freely and naturally as our lives are given, as much a part of us as the blood that flows through our veins, the oxygen that courses through our lungs, the spark and crackle of the joyous song of movement continuously playing through muscle and nerve. And all that blinds us to it is the make-believe of stories we tell ourselves and our dream that things are otherwise.
Such a ripping of the air! Such a cacophony of sound! All at once, from nowhere, a flock of geese splashes down. The waters leap up to meet webbed feet. Wings flap and fold. And before I can even catch my startled breath, they’re settled, and silent, and floating as if they’d been there for hours, as if their grand entrance hadn’t awakened entire worlds.
The ice had barely finished forming when the wind came, and with it pine needles and a troop of leaves rushing to the lake with joyful abandon, landing on its solid, thrilling cold, and the ice giving way only enough to hold them where they could see the heights from which they had flown and the wide, unobstructed sky’s light. Below them, beneath smooth rocks, fish dreamed of the music of forming ice and the laughter of pine needles and leaves.
I want to dig up this patch of ground In some magical way that would permit me to do so without disturbing a millimeter of it. and then to place it within a shadow box to hang on my wall, where I would gaze at it daily, or better yet, to package it in such a way that I could place it in your hands, where you could breathe its perfumes and truly see the depth of its livingness and be filled, as I am, with transcendent wonder that such a thing could be, that it could lie in total obscurity deep in a woods to sing its song only for the crows and deer and pines and be content with that, gloriously.
The afternoon is overcast with clouds that filter the light, turning it pearly. And it’s warm – well above freezing at last – and the wetlands call me. Frankly, it looks dreary. Dull browns and grays. “Color and form, Susan,” some inner mentor reminds me. These are gifts, these winter lessons. I toss my judgments into the sky, empty my pockets of labels, feel the wind, hear it in the branches and brush and reeds. Only the wind and nothing more, and it is moist and cold and wonderful. A light gleams from the edge of the woods and I step toward it and see it is a low spot with ice lingering on the blanket of leaves. So here it is, found, of course, exactly when it was least expected, exactly where, and exactly what I wanted and needed and hadn’t even asked for.
Remember the cluttered bulletin boards I mentioned at the beginning of the year? I shared my intention to re-do them and told you I had written it on my do-list. Well, I did redesign them, and I’m pleased with the result. They contain photos of a few of my pals, little “pokes” that say things like “Smile”, “Celebrate What Is,” “Doodle, “Read,” a couple of my ink doodles, and quotes and slogans and reminders that unfailingly wake me up.
The largest piece on the first board has grabbed my attention more than once this week. I don’t know the source. I heard it somewhere and scribbled it down. Anyway, here’s what it says: “Look around you. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year.”
I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s like, Pow! It just smacks me in the face with its wisdom and plain truth.
Here’s something else about that little group of sentences. It instantly reflects to you your level of optimism. Do the changes you imagine might be coming at you, at us all, in the coming year prompt feelings of hope and anticipation? Or do they evoke ripples of fear and dread?
There’s no right or wrong answer to that, by the way. You feel what you feel. The sentences just give you a way to notice what that is.
But I will say this about fear. Again, it’s a sentence I scribbled down while listening to something. I do that a lot. It’s why I’m developing a process for dealing with the scraps of paper I scribble on all the time. But that’s another story. The thing I heard about fear was “Fear is putting faith in what you don’t want to happen.” It could also be putting faith in what you think has happened or is happening now. Regardless of the time frame, fear is agreeing with yourself to believe in the thing that scares you. And unless that thing is standing right in front of you and growling in your face, you’re imagining it and putting faith in its reality.
There’s no judgment with that. It’s just an interesting observation about fear. It intrigues me because it asks me to evaluate where I’m putting my faith and my energy and attention.
We’re in the middle of a cold-snap here, the silver lining of which, for me, has been time to sit at my keyboard and dream. I gaze up at my bulletin boards and send loving thoughts to the pals pictured there, I read a quote or a prompt. I’ve resumed doodling. Eventually my eyes fall on the rectangle with the words, “Look around. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year,” and I give thanks.
Wishing you a week of appreciation and well-placed faith.
