With the recent passing of my mom, I feel the world is topsy-turvy. Yet, I spent some time at our property today and the ground was still under my feet, the blue sky above, and the river still flowed. It appears all is as it should be, after all.
As I walked in the woods, I noticed the leaves already taking on colors of fall. It struck me that we see their greatest beauty right before they die. It’s when we stop to notice them and are in awe of their magnificence. Sometimes it is like that with people, too.
My mom was a truly amazing soul, but for most of my life I saw her primarily as Mom. It was in the last year, as she started a more rapid decline, that I finally learned to appreciate her true beauty.
Like the trees I noticed today, she matured from a sapling, weathered many storms and grew to provide so much to those around her. She was strong and sturdy, and we came to believe she was a permanent fixture in our lives. Then one day we noticed her leaves changing.
As we witnessed her decline, her underlying beauty became evident: she had a heart of gold, a kindness that transcended prejudices, and a thousand-watt smile. These had always been there, but just as we don’t notice the trees until their foliage changes, we simply stopped perceiving them.
Like the life cycle of the tree, all of life is made up of cycles and seasons. None of us know how long ours will last and when our end will come.
We try to avoid thinking about that, and in the process, we often stop living consciously. We are always doing, doing, and doing; trying to cram in so much living between the beginning and the end.
Rather than seeing life as one big season with a finite beginning and end, we can instead remember our season is made of infinite individual moments. These moments can be big and dramatic, or intimate and heartfelt; they can be joyful or sad; they can be uplifting or debilitating; they can be of every emotion and experience we can imagine.
All these doing moments are great, but we also need to have in-between moments, and it is here—when we practice being—we get to savor life and become more aware.
Many of us are not accustomed to living in awareness—we prefer all that doing to being because it’s more comfortable. However, if we can move toward more awareness, I know our lives and those around us will be so much richer.
To get the most of our season takes an effort to stop so much doing and engage in more being; to shift our focus to seeing—truly seeing—those around us; to appreciate the differences as much as we appreciate the similarities; to recognize heart felt kindness and to offer it in return; to be generous in not only our giving, but also in our thoughts; to stop taking life and our place in it with such gravity and instead laugh more, smile at strangers, and notice how incredibly beautiful human nature is; to breath deeper, look up at the sky, watch the rivers flow, and feel the ground beneath your feet.
These are the things that help steady us in this ever-shifting life and help us enjoy our particular season in all its glory.
Nsteadonline 