Spring is here and it's one of my favorite times of year. The hills around us are green, wildflowers are everywhere, it's warm but not too hot and the sky is a lovely shade of blue. Life and beauty abound and I take great pleasure in going outside and taking it all in. The other day it struck me how different my life was a year ago and how grateful I am to be in this time and this place right now.
Everyone knows that difficult times will come, but somehow we're never as prepared for them as we'd like to be. This last year has been quite challenging in a number of ways and I really didn't have any useful tools with which to address all the issues that have come up for me until very recently and that has made my challenges all the more difficult. But you know, the things that have seemed the worst in my life have yielded countless blessings and I wouldn't be in the place I am if they hadn't happened.
I know, everyone says that and until we go through difficulties ourselves we don't really understand how limiting life can be when we're not living in a way that best serves us. It can be really difficult to see the constraints that we put on ourselves and that we allow others to put on us, until our life is so small there is barely room to turn around and get any kind of an objective perspective. In those cases we not only need friends to help see our lives clearly but we need the openness to hear what it is they have to say.
I'm probably the worst with that. Not only have I not listened, I arranged my life in such a way that no one could get a clear picture of what was going on with me. I kept everyone at a distance so they could only see what I allowed them to see and I didn't let them get any closer even when I wanted them to be close to me. I was alone and didn't even realize it, because our minds are so tricky it's easy to deceive ourselves in order to continue surviving in the environment we've created. Change is scary. Our egos feel like we are going to die and indeed part of us will die if we acknowledge the need to change and start taking steps to make the change happen.
In our society we don't deal with death very well. Death is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs and yet we can't avoid it, it's going to happen. We comfort ourselves with believing that death awaits us in a far distant future when we are very old and very frail, but in fact death is all around us. Every little change we make is a death. Each time we choose one thing over another it's a death and we need to become aware of that dying process and how it affects our psyches so we can choose to embrace the dying and help it work to our advantage.
Years ago I read tarot cards at parties for extra money and the one card everyone hated to see was Death. Whenever Death would show up for someone I would take their hand and smile at them saying, "Don't panic, it doesn't necessarily mean anyone is going to die. What this card really means is that something is going to come to an end in order to make way for something new. For whatever reason something isn't working in your life and it needs to die in order to open up new possibilities in your life. Death is very powerful card, but it's also a positive card." If only I had been able to hear my own wisdom I so easily shared with others.
This time last year I felt like I was dying very slowly, one small piece at a time. Spring had come and I resented the meretricious display of new life all around me. I wanted the world to be encased in winter, lying dormant and dead as I felt I was. I hated how I felt, I hated my life and I hated spring. All I wanted was surcease from the pain and I didn't see that coming any time soon. That time of dying was so necessary. It wasn't something to be resisted and avoided because death is what clears the way for new life. If I had been able to embrace that process I would have made much better decisions shortly down the road and I would have avoided further pain and sorrow.
So now, a year later I'm embracing spring because I'm finally at a place of growth in my life. It isn't easy, but neither is it easy for a sprout to grow into a full-fledged plant. I have my growing pains and with the growth will come more death but I think, I hope, I'm in a better place to accept it now. I try to keep my eyes open so I can see my life clearly, I have good friends who are there to help me see clearly when I can't and I try to accept every little death with courage and grace because even though death is still scary I see how very necessary it is.
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