COME ABOUTPublished on January 9, 2015
Just a note to point out that, believe it or not, I can already feel the coming of spring. Spare me the groans, please. I have been doing this for a long time. Somehow, the long trip to the Winter Solstice, with each day getting shorter and each night getting longer, is taxing on me. In some ways I hardly notice it because I am just along for the ride. Much like accepting my fate when I board an airplane, there is almost a comfort in bundling toward winter, a certain resignation.
And, so it seems, somewhere around the winter solstice I get a little lost, call it confused or whatever. It apparently is just a time of reorientation, much like when sailing we come about and find ourselves headed back to where we came from, in this case spring and summer.
My wife always finds it funny when I start to speak of impending spring while still in the first days of January, but it happens every year. I can somehow feel the sun start to move northward and it always makes me happy. Throughout autumn, part of me is twiddling my thumbs as the sun plunges toward the longest night; it's like staring out the window of train at the lonely crossing-lights while rattling through the night or peering through the porthole from an airplane in midflight. The bottom line is that I am waiting. The darker months of the year, the autumn, is beautiful (everyone says so!), but something in me fights the dying of the light each year. After all, I was a summer baby, mid-July.
Anyway, in the last day or so I woke up to the energy of spring once again, however faint I may feel it. I am getting my mind back on track, feeling more normal, feeling more health oriented. Every winter is a grind toward spring and I wonder if I will make it. Of course I probably will, but in the dark months I eat too much and get far too little exercise. There is an element of uncertainty there. But I am getting my groove back, taking on tasks like organizing all my "stuff" and generally feeling better about things. I have something to look forward to. Yes, I am still waiting for spring, but each day sees a little more light, if only a minute or so. And there is something to the idea of basking in the future light at the end of the tunnel of winter.
Yeah, please save me the platitudes. I know I should enjoy each season and I am dancing as fast as I can in that department. It's all good, but at the same time, if you want the truth, I am like a kid at Christmas morning, waiting at the top of the stairs for mom and dad to tell me I can come down and open my presents. That's how much I like spring and summer. I would move south if I did not have such a great family all around.
[A photo toward the back of our lot. The building on the left is our meditation room and the gazebo-like roof on the right shelters our stupa, a Buddhist monument containing relics that represents the mind of the Buddha in physical form. We circumambulate it.]