The park served me well, treating me to the sight of the first robin I’ve seen this season. To my absolute delight, I managed to snap a decent photo of her, fat with eggs, on the branch of a pine tree, I got a shot of a daffodil bud, still tight, but beaming its yellow in the midst of its thick green and blue-green leaves. And right in a tangle of the winter-dried brush of the butterfly garden, I spotted a glorious little crocus. The lake held mallards and geese swimming together past the pine woods. My photos of them weren’t clear, but the sight is bright in my mind.
For all those moments when I’m looking through the camera’s lens, I give thanks. They lift me out of my musings and let me see nature’s beauty and grace.
Nevertheless, I looked at the world differently today than I had in the past when springtime began.
I used to think of Spring as a sign of renewal, a message that life on the planet would rise, even in the face of a worldwide catastrophe. Some fragment would remain, to begin again, even if it took eons. Now I’m no longer so certain. I suppose that it’s still possible. Somewhere, in some undiscovered pocket of wilderness, perhaps a small tribe could escape the devastation currently assaulting us from so many directions on so many levels. God is great, as my friend Modoulamin often reminds me. And we are merely humans, however arrogant in our ignorance we are.
When I got home, I opened my quotes file to see who it was that said we should live every day as if it is our first, or our last. The name Mary Atwood comes to mind. But it’s not showing up in my search. (Whoever it was, thank you.)
I never did find it. But I did find one on appreciation that speaks to the point I want to make. I was reminded again at the park today that this moment that I am alive. This one, where we dance on the brink of extinction not only of ourselves, individually, but of the whole curious, amazing human species. Forever.
Here’s the quote I found:
“Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure:
1. Acceptance
2. Understanding
3. Appreciation
Remove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart.Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it — do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions?
So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
If you’re going to live as if today is your first day, or your last, what you’ll be living in is, at its core, love.
On your first day, you wholly accept every still-unlabeled bit of sensory data that dances into your awareness. You understand without question that you have arrived in a wondrous place. You appreciate its intensity and motion.
On your last day, you bring the whole of your life experience with you as you take in the world for one last time. You accept it, in all its complexity and dimensions. You understand that it has had meaning for you and has grown you. You appreciate the reality of all the experiences that brought you to these last few moments, here, on this mysterious planet, at this most poignant time.
So, as I stood in the woods at the edge of the lake, thinking for the first time in my life, that we who are living now may be the Final Edition of our species, that it’s truly possible, I let myself feel the sunlight on my cheek as I watched the emerald-headed mallard and his mate paddle along the lake’s edge. I smiled, remembering the robin I saw moments ago, and the lemon-yellow daffodil bud and the bright crocus shining in the weeds. And my heart filled with gratitude and joy for the sheer miracle of living. Regardless.
Warmly,
Susan