You never know in the morning what a day will hold. Surprises almost always lurk in the folds of its hours, some welcome, some not. But both are gifts to you, even those that come disguised as setbacks or misfortune. One rewards; the other teaches. Take this flower, a scarlet nasturtium, that yesterday, before it bloomed, I had almost covered with mulch for the winter, but didn’t. Beneath its fat, green, lily-pad leaves I saw its tiny bud, full of life and hope. This morning it beamed its thanks and whispered, “Never, ever give up.”
Suddenly, the bodies of the trees are bare again, their wondrous limbs etching poems against the sky. I stop and stare as if I’d never seen them before, awestruck once more by the realization that these towering beings are as alive as I am, cycling through the same seasons, knowing the same ebb and flow of darkness and light, of activity and rest. I reach out to touch the smooth cool bark of a sycamore, and although its consciousness is far beyond my knowing, I feel a connection and something deep within me breathes, “Alive. Yes, alive.”
Here and there, in protected places, handfuls of golden leaves still wave from the tops of the maples. But for the most part, the branches are bare, ready for their winter naps. Except, of course, for the oaks, the magnificent ones, who only now put on their amber autumn color. Wearing their glowing crowns they reign now, trumpeting the trees’ last song, proclaiming the judgment: Well and beautifully done.
If you keep faith and follow the whisperings of your heart, ‘though the day be dark and swept with rain, a moment will come when the skies will open and the Yes pour down its light.
Fly, babies! Grab this wind and go! You are the hope of butterflies, the guarantor of their tomorrows. Claim your spot on the soft earth, and dream your milkweed dreams the winter through. Dream how strong your stem will be, how fragrant your dusty-rose flowers. Imagine the flaming wings of the Monarchs as they return to you day after day to feast on the nourishment that only you can provide. Then rise from your dreams, my children, and live them. Fly, babies, fly. Grab this wind and go.
Walk into the world trusting. Even when you don’t know how to go, each step opens to the next, and the Yes will guide your way– tugging your sleeve, posting signs, singing tunes, ringing bells, placing stepping stones across the rivers. Are not the rivers themselves all led to find their way to the sea?
Even now, beneath skies deep with clouds and a cold wind blowing, even now, in the days of dwindling light, the Yes provides reminders. The trees may be bare and the fields stripped of vegetation, but look: here is a shrub still holding its color, a kiss-bright red to dispel the gloom. Go into the night believing, it says, that you are supported, and loved.
While listening to various points of view on a topic I’m currently researching, I’ve once again come face to face with the realization that that each of us really does lives in a unique world of his or her own. That’s hardly a new thought. But lately the fact of it has struck me with a new clarity. In fact, a while back I started using the phrase “Reality Bubble” to describe the personal belief-realities in which we live.
Oh sure, there’s the “consensus reality” we all more or less agree on: That’s a tree. The sky is blue. This is a table.
But when it comes to remembering things we observed, or interpreting events, we slide into some muddy ground. Ask any police officer who’s ever taken an accident report from eye witnesses. Three people will give three different accounts. We even have to watch replays of video tapes to decide whether the right call was made about a football play.
And when it comes to what we believe about, say, diet, or religion, or politics, or what’s important, well, watch out! The ground is more than muddy. It sort of resembles quicksand, where, before you know it, you’re sunk.
I took a psychology class once from a professor who had a special interest in belief systems. He found three guys in different mental hospitals, each of whom believed he was Jesus Christ, and he had them all transferred to the same hospital and assigned to the same support group. His hope was that their delusions would be lessened. But instead, they began by aggressively arguing with each other about which of them was holier. And finally each found ways to convince himself that the other two were, in one case, insane, and in the other, dead and being operated by a machine.
(The professor wrote about their encounters in a book called The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, if you’d like to read the whole story. )
The primary lesson the professor brought away from the experiment is that we strongly identify with our beliefs. When they’re threatened, we respond defensively because it feels as if we, personally, are being attacked. We each believe that what we believe is the true reality. And our brains work hard to support our beliefs. They carefully scour all incoming data and present us with the evidence that matches our beliefs, filtering out the stuff that doesn’t.
And because people who hold beliefs that are similar to ours reinforce our identity, we tend to like them better than people whose beliefs are different. And the more different the beliefs are, the more we dislike the person who holds them.
If we want to create more harmony with others, a good place to start is by recognizing that we aren’t our beliefs, and our beliefs don’t necessarily provide us with a true picture of the way things really are. Remember, at one time, most people believed that man would never fly.
Other people aren’t their beliefs either. But they probably feel that their beliefs are a part of their identity, just as we tend to feel that what we believe is an intimate part of who we are.
Beliefs are just thoughts that have been repeated so often that we assume they must be true. Maybe they’ve been repeated to us since our early childhood. Maybe we picked them up from TV or from social media, or adopted them in school because they seemed to have so much proof behind them. And our brains have been bringing us evidence ever since to reassure us.
Sometimes, if you’re very tactful, persistent, and patient, you can provide enough evidence to someone to persuade him to accept something that you believe in place of a belief he has held to be true. But his first response is likely to be defensive. (And later, he may conclude that you’re either insane or dead and being operated by a machine!)
But on the whole, the most harmonious way to deal with those who hold beliefs that differ from yours is to recognize how crucial our beliefs are to our sense of being, and to respect that each of us is entitled to his or her own view of things. When I want to have a conversation with someone about a subject where we disagree, I like to begin by saying, “I don’t see it that way. In my reality bubble . . .” and then I share what I believe. I’m not saying the other person’s views are wrong, just that I see things differently.
Look for the things on which you can agree, and agree to disagree on the rest. And above all, try not to take offense when someone’s beliefs are different from your own. If you’re really brave, try looking at things from their point of view. Who knows? It may turn out that you discover your own view needs some alteration. Reality is, after all, a very relative and mysterious place.
To the oaks, the seasons are the breathing of the earth, exhaling her life-giving sustenence, then drawing in the radiance of the sky. To them, it’s all a grand ballet— the upward rush of sap, the emergence of leaves, the arrival of the singing birds, the flowering and fullness of it all, then the inward flow, the returning to the source with gifts of flaming crimson and gold. And between the going out and coming in the deeply balanced pause, allowing summer to ascend to its heights, winter to reach the fullness of rest. The oaks surrender to it all, caught in the beauty, joyous in the rhythm, glad for their part in the dance.
It never hurts to have some staples set aside. That’s what Grandma used to say, tucking jars of home-canned plums. apples, pickles and soups, beets, tomatoes, white beans and green on wooden shelves that lined her cellar wall. Sometimes I’d stand in its doorway marveling at the colors, remembering the fragrances that wafted through the house when grandma canned. I thought of them today when I saw the ripened cherries and recalled how they hung encased in ice last winter, and how the early-returning robins feasted on them in the March snow. Mother Nature, it seems. has her pantry, too. Maybe she knew my grandma.
