One Step at a Time

 Martin Luther King Jr once wrote, "Faith is taking the first step, even when you can't see the whole staircase."

Yes. We have to learn to trust in ourselves, in what is important to us, and take that first step anyway. I believe that faith and trust are facets of our nature which we are born with. But as life goes on, and we encounter betrayal in our lives, that faith and trust can be eroded. It can take a lifetime to choose to be sufficiently vulnerable enough to dare to trust again.

And these betrayals, which sadly seem to be an inevitable part of life, need not be great ones which bring our whole world crashing down around us.  Any time someone lies to us, even a white lie, or doesn't turn up when they said they would, or is unkind to us, we can feel betrayed. Once we feel that way, it can take a lot of time to build up sufficient faith to make the world seem trustable again. 

In her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead, Brené Brown explains that, "it's a chicken-or-the-egg issue: We need to feel trust to be vulnerable and we need to be vulnerable in order to trust. There is no trust test, no scoring system, no green light that tells us that it's safe to let ourselves be seen. The research participants described trust as a slow-building, layered process that happens over time."

So it is wonderful to see people like Martin Luther King Jr, who have faith in what they believe, have faith in what they are working towards, and take that first step anyway, regardless of the consequences. It takes courage to have faith, courage to trust, courage to be vulnerable. But if we choose to live with faith and trust, the rewards can be wonderful, wonder-ful.

Happiness is Where You Find It

I thoroughly agree with David Dunn's view that, "Happiness has to be found along the way, not at the end of the road."

Because if we always have our eyes fixed on the end of the road, on a fictional happiness that will happen in the future, if only we do X, Y or Z, it is very easy for us to miss out on the ordinary, everyday instances of happiness happening right under our noses.

As human beings, we live in time, so it is natural to look towards the future, and there is nothing wrong with that. So long as it doesn't mean that we ignore what is happening to us right now. I've just spent three glorious days with my best friend in Cumbria, and thoroughly enjoyed every last minute of it. Yes, I had been looking forward to it for weeks, but I also enjoyed it as it was happening. It was glorious weather on Wednesday and we enjoyed a brisk walk along Roanhead Beach and then visited Furness Abbey.

An extra thrill was provided by our GA President, Anne Mills, who had kindly dropped off the Vice-Presidential medallion at Celia's house for me. So we had a small presentation ceremony, which has made it all seem real, in a way which the Zoom occasion did not.

Happiness can indeed be found along the way...

 

The Efficacy of Flowers

 I love this week's quotation, by Chao Hsiu Chen, "When a flower blooms, it shows us its beauty. If it does not bloom, it teaches us hope."

Flowers show us their beauty and lift our hearts. I walk either in the fields around the village or in Salcey Forest most days and my heart is always lifted by the sight of a flower I have never seen before - snowdrops, primroses, daffodils, tulips and just now, bluebells. I mark the passing of the days and of the seasons by the flowers that bloom.

And I suppose that a flower that does not bloom does teach us hope, in that we can wait in patience for it to bloom. 

But I have more often been taught hope by flowers that bloom in the oddest places - in the cracks of pavements, for example. They seem to prove that no matter what their environment, they will still burst forth in their glory. And that we can do the same, no matter how harsh our own situation.

They can also teach us about the power of nature to overcome man-made environments. I can remember seeing a photo of Chernobyl, the Russian city which had the nuclear incident in 1986. Nature has taken it over now...

I think that flowers can be a potent symbol of hope. They hold out the promise that there will always be new life, even in the darkest times.

What brings you hope, as we come out of this pandemic?

A Few Clouds in the Sky

 Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century Transcendentalist, wrote, "Just as there must be a few clouds in the sky, so the mind needs a few moods."

Blue sky days are lovely and I very much enjoy walking in the forest on such days, like this morning, when the trees are silhouetted against the rich, glorious blue. 

Yet I know that without the rain we've had for the past few days, the forest would not be as green and lush as it is. So yes, the clouds (and the rain) are needed.

So much for the first half of Thoreau's words. I guess by "the mind needs a few moods", he means that we can't be happy all the time. Or if we are, we're probably ignoring something in our own lives, or in the world around us. For example, many folk are nostalgic for the past, which their memory has edited into an ideal golden age, where everything went right. If I think back to my own childhood summers, the sun was always shining and I was playing outside happily with my friends. Yet I know objectively that rain often "stopped play" and we were driven inside. And that my childhood, like most people's, was not a time of undiluted happiness.

It is only when we go deep, and see the clouds, that we can understand ourselves fully. Doing the necessary shadow work can be very painful, but it is necessary, if we are to be whole. I have blogged about this here. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and it is by learning from the clouds, from the sad or painful things which happen to us, that we grow.

Let us embrace all our moods, which have something to teach us, if we are patient enough to sit and observe them, rather than rushing into action to make ourselves happy again.