Do not wish to be anything but what you are
and try to be that perfectly.
St Francis de Sales
Tag: Present moment
….And keeping our faces toward change
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller
In a general sense we seem to prefer things to remain the same and dislike too much uncertainty (except maybe when the normal dull Irish Summer has been replaced by warm sunny days). Change unsettles and can prompt an almost instant movement towards turning away or tightening up. So it is a challenge to “keep our faces towards change” – as Helen Keller says- by going against our instinct for once and staying with something that our fears tell us to avoid. When we consistently buy into our fears and strengthen fearful thoughts, we can forget some of the larger truths of life, or lose sight of our essential confidence and strength. An avoidance mentality leads us to expect trouble and weakens our ability to live with how the present moment is unfolding.
One of the fundamental truths of existence is that life changes, and changes in ways that we cannot expect. So developing this capacity to turn towards change is a necessary skill for working with life. It is probably best to practice it in smaller matters, so that it is somewhat developed when the bigger changes happen. So it is good to sometimes look at some small things we avoid and see what we can learn from them. We could practice with something like some paperwork we have been putting off, a contact we have been delaying, or staying in the presence of someone who disturbs us instead of running away. In this way we can be curious about what happens when we move towards something rather than moving away.
photo of dawn at Dunmore East Co. Waterford, Ireland
Only present time
The river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
photo: vincent, la rivière Rouvre.
Summer light
Every year the lilies are so perfect
I can hardly believe their lapped light crowding
the black, mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them –
the muskrats swimming among the pads and the grasses can reach out their muscular arms and touch only so many, they are that rife and wild.
But what in this world is perfect?
I bend closer and see. how this one is clearly lopsided —
and that one wears an orange blight – and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away – and that one is a slumped purse, full of its own unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled – to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing –
that the light is everything – that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
Mary Oliver, The Ponds
Never fully fixed
Self-love involves a yes to myself in whatever I am going through, instead of holding on to some concept of what or how I should be. Any idea I have about who I am or who I should be is never accurate, for it always falls short of the living presence that I am, as this unfolds freshly in each new moment. Who I am is not a fixed entity but a dynamic stream of experiencing that is alive in every moment – when I let myself happen.
John Welwood.
Fresh eyes
We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
photo a davey
