Hello beautiful people and welcome to this dose of Celestial Goodness. Please find this week’s video here: https://youtu.be/ptkiidZ_1rc?si=eY8aIqscgxi9Z5Or
As always, thank you for joining me in this space and on this journey. I hope as always that you are doing well, taking time to savor the experience of living, and doing your best to take care of yourself—in all the ways—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Now what that means will look different on different days. Some days you might be at 20% and other days you might only be able to give 110%. Do your best. That is all that you can do.
It seems to me like 2024 has somewhere to be because the days have really been zipping by—at least to me. I can’t believe that it is now mid-March—in the year 2024—I blinked and here we are. Four years ago, around this same week, I walked into my workplace for what would be the last time for at least 17 months. Yes, the panini started four years ago, and it turned our worlds upside down. There are also moments when my brain truly thinks that the 90s were just ten years ago. So wild. And how can I forget that brief period of oh say three years where I was telling people that my not-so-little-little-brother was 19 even though he had passed 21. Hahaha. Too funny. What is time anyway?
Julian Barnes in, “The Sense of an Ending,” said, “I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.”
Soon all of these days will be but a memory, and we will keep transitioning in and out of seasons, chapters, days, and events. People will come and go, and some will stay, and either will be a beautiful thing. In essence, everything is fluid, moving, changing, and transitioning. Even now, in this hemisphere, we are emerging out of winter and into spring.
Despite the assault on my sinuses, spring is definitely one of my favorite seasons. Everything starts to bloom again, and to come alive in grand spectacle. My apartment has a really great view high above my neighborhood, and off into the horizon. This vantage point offers me a spectacular opportunity to spy on the transitions of the seasons.
Seasonal transitions are never sudden; one day you get up, and amidst the bare trees, you notice something green yearning to come into the world. The colors in the pond below changes color as well with the weather and season. In the spring the water looks almost indigo. One day, everything bursts into bloom, and the whole world looks technicolor. The greens are greenier, the flowers look more vibrant, and for those of us who need an abundance of sunlight, the days are longer. Spring will always come without fail.
And that is the topic of our conversation today. Spring always comes. The dawn always comes. As my boss reminded me one day of this passage from the Tao Te Ching, “High winds do not last all morning. Heavy rain does not last all day.” I say this because some days are inevitable tougher than others. Did you ever have a day where you woke up, and you struggled to summon the ability to feel cheer. Not like a depression, you just woke up tired, cranky, maybe a bit more irritable. Everything starts to feel as if it is conspiring against you instead of for you. And let me say that when these moments happen it does seem to create a domino effect. You might spill your coffee on a clean white shirt, stub your toe, and have to deal with the most idiotic things and perhaps people. When it rains, it pours. And yet…this too shall pass.
Be not defeated by a bad day or even a bad chapter. Know that things can also change for the best. I may have spoken about this before, but there is a story out there in the world about not looking at things that happen as either good or bad—they are just things happening. This is the story of the farmer and his son.
A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away, and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbors cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbors shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
And sometimes we do need to see, or we need to switch the perspective and get ourselves into a different mental space. I recently got a new book—shocking—I know. This one is by one of my favorites if not favorite writer, Paulo Coelho. It is an inspirational companion to his book, “The Alchemist,” and it is called Maktub.
The rough translation of which means, “It is written.” On the back cover of the book, it says, “Today somewhere a treasure waits for you.” The other day I was in a mood, and I happened to walk by and glance at the book and saw that. These words caused emotions to swell up inside of me, and I took a deep breath and said yes. I released some of the pent-up emotions that I was holding on to. Let me not lose sight of today’s treasure, holding on to energy that does not support my well-being. We might feel defeated by a day, a week, a month, or a chapter in our life, but we cannot stay in the space of feeling defeat. That is because things pass. Days pass, and there is so much life yet to live, so much to experience, to feel exuberance for and about. We must not let certain circumstances cloud our vision to the beauty that remains in this life.
Also, in Maktub, one of the stories—it is a book of short tales—says this, “These words are written by the cellist Pablo Casals. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again. For the past eighty years I have started each day the same way. This is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, I play two preludes, and a fugue by Bach. It is a sort of benediction on my house. But it is always a way of re-establishing contact with the mystery of life, with the miracle of being part of the human race. Even though I have been doing this for eighty years, the music I play is never the same, it always teaches me something new, fantastic, unbelievable.”
Many years ago, I wrote an article for a friend and a portion of it said this, “As Florence Scovel Shinn said, “It is dark before the dawn, but the dawn never fails. Trust in the dawn.” Many of us spend a great deal of our lives planning. We make plans to graduate from high school, then go to college, get married, have a family, buy a home, build a white picket fence, and then retire. We never plan for the divorce, the death of a close loved one, the crumbling of our business, or the crumbling our dreams. No one talks about the pain and despair of watching everything that you have worked for dissolve as though it all meant nothing. As a society we do not talk about the time that is necessary for some people to grief after the physical death of a loved one, or the death of a relationship. We expect people to be always strong, and to face each day without any weak moments.
We encourage people to believe that “failure is not an option,” when sometimes it is the outcome. We see people going about their daily lives, and often times we know nothing of the struggle that they face beneath smiles. We do not realize that they are in a dark place within their own mind. We do not realize that depression is a reality for so many people in our society. We do not realize the crippling effects that many people face when life does not go according to plan. A dark moment or a dark patch in a person’s life can make all hope seem lost. The perception of a failure can be too much to bear. We do not encourage each other to see that from our darkest moments could arise some of our greatest accomplishments and lessons. We are not encouraged to trust in the dawn.
After you have gone through your darkest moments, after you have gone through the valley of the shadow of death within your soul, you will arrive at a point where you will realize that you can only see the stars in the darkness. Let them guide you, and remind you, that you are a part of so much more. They will remind you to be humble, because you are a tiny part of a much larger whole; but then they will also remind you that you are great. They will remind you that you have gifts that are unique to you, and that you ought to share them with the rest of humanity. The stars will shimmer, and hope will arise in your heart. You will remember that each morning, the dusk gives way to the dawn. These are the lessons that we learn in the dark—strength, perseverance, resilience, determination, and courage.
When the dawn does arrive, you will be stronger and wiser than before. You will realize that in your life, many things will happen—the good, the bad, and the downright ugly—and most of what transpires will be out of your control. You will experience the entire gambit of emotions—everything from love to anger, and all that is in between. The darkness will teach you that no matter what happens, change comes, and you have the ability to react in the positive or the negative to anything that you face. Whatever happens, never give up!
Look to the sky and remember that the dawn is coming, and with it, your joy. John Steinbeck said, “Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.”
May the stars shine brightly over you until we meet again, and may you not be defeated.
Celestial Goodness 