Year-end Reflection
- Linda
- Dec 15, 2023
- 4 min read
“Do not be heavy, be light, light, light – full of light!”
– Soen Roshi Quoted by Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard
Light and love and other things too
It’s the season of light and love with bright candles and colorful lights glowing everywhere. Beloved family and friends gather, share laughter and celebratory meals, and exchange gifts. With so many delights, the year-end holiday season is a time for the heart to be lifted and light.
But I have to be real here. For me the holiday season also brings a reflective mood and sad emotions sprinkled on top of light spirits. Looking back on the quickly passing year I have a palpable realization of impermanence. Because there are people and canine companions who won’t be joining me at (or underneath) the holiday tables this year.
A wise woman once told me, “When you open yourself to love, you open yourself to loss.” This life-teaching summarizes the universal human experience of impermanence. At year-end there's joy and the full heart. And there’s also sadness and the broken heart.
Silver linings
Just as all things are impermanent, sadness and other emotions transform, like moving clouds that change their shape. This transformation is a kind of blessing which may yield unforeseeable developments. Two examples from my life happened this year. The sudden loss of a dear friend brought her partner even closer in friendship to me. And two other dear friends whose contact I had lost for decades reappeared and we’ve bridged the time and distance.
Sadness at this time of the year may feel isolating and out-of-step with the (seemingly) prevailing holiday spirit. Whatever you're feeling is normal! Please remember to practice self-compassion and take good care of yourself when acceptance of things as they are and lightness in the heart are difficult to find.
Here are some wise words in case the holiday season gets “too real” for you too. “Comfort and joy” indeed. . .
“. . .positive emotions are not about suppressing or covering pain, anxiety, or outrage on behalf of others. Positive feelings can be present in the mind alongside negative ones. In fact, they help us cope with the hard things and hard feelings of life and fuel us to keep on going for the sake of others.”
– Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Photo: Ian Taylor on Unsplash
Bird Wings
by Rumi
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding.
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings.
Love
“Understanding impermanence makes it possible for us to regard all beings with love and compassion. Genuine love and compassion are not intended only for certain individuals, groups, or categories of beings. Genuine love and compassion embrace everyone. True love and compassion are all-encompassing, unconditional, and sincere. The more love and compassion we have within us, the more natural it will be to realize the true nature of things.” – Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Sadness, Love, Openness
Forgiveness
“Forgiveness is giving up hope for a better past.”
– Attributed to Lily Tomlin
“For most people, the work of forgiveness is a tender process. Practicing forgiveness, we may go through stages of grief, rage, sorrow, fear and confusion. As we let ourself feel the pain we still hold, forgiveness comes as a relief, a release for our heart in the end. Forgiveness acknowledges that no matter how much we may have suffered, we will not put another human being out of our heart.”
– Jack Kornfield, “The Practice of Forgiveness”
“Forgiveness is an act of the heart, a movement to let go of the pain, the resentment, the outrage that you have carried as a burden for so long. It is an easing of your own heart. We have all been harmed, just as we have at times harmed ourselves and others.”
– Jack Kornfield, “Forgiveness Meditations”
Acceptance
“. . .a primary source of contraction is not accepting the way it is. Much if not most of our stress, emotional pain, and conflicts with others come from friction, from resistance to life as it is.
Acceptance means you give up to the truth – the facts, reality – no matter what it is. You may not like it, which is usually understandable. . . [However,] things are the way they are, and we can accept them while still trying to make them better (when that’s possible).
At the bottom, acceptance grounds you in what is true, which is where you have to start for any true effectiveness, happiness, or healing. Acceptance is the foundation of wisdom and inner peace.”
– Rick Hanson, Ph.D., “Accept It”
"Practice self-compassion and kindness. Recognize that acceptance is not giving up -- it's being willing to have the experience you are already having. Letting go of resistance can relieve suffering."
– Kimberly Carson, MPH, E-RYT and Carol Krucoff, E-RYT, Relax into Yoga for Seniors
Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash
Grief from loss
"Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.”
– Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow
“Grieving is a landscape that is so varied and so vast that it can only be discovered through our own most intimate experience. . . No one escapes her touch nor in the end should we. The river of grief might pulse deep inside us, hidden from our view, but its presence informs our lives at every turn. It can drive us into the numbing habits of escape from suffering or bring us face to face with our own humanity.”
– Roshi Joan Halifax, “A Buddhist’s Perspective on Grieving”
"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”
– Francis Weller
Photo the top of the page: geometry in nature on Instagram
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