“In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.”
– Blaise Pascal
What are you carrying in your heart right now? Take a moment and breathe and feel. This morning, frustration and a pinch of self-pity made an encampment in mine. Ah, but just the awareness of my breath and beating heart starts to shift things. I dissolve the stories I was telling myself that allowed frustration and self-pity to be given a welcome mat. Feeling them is one thing. Dwelling on them; that is to say, giving them a dwelling place, is something altogether different.
Twelve inches of snow fell yesterday in my hometown in Maine. I long to get out into soft mounds of white, create snowshoe spiral paths through it. More of the ick dissolves. My heart feels lighter now with the anticipatory thrill of sunshine and crisp air, of the abundance of possible creations my snowshoes can make in fluffy powder.
I’ve taken David Whyte’s poem, “Start Close In” to heart. I suppose it’s a modern take on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s quote, “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it…” (My mother recited Goethe from memory each year as I procrastinated on my science fair projects.) But Whyte’s poem also speaks about claiming what is yours to do and discarding the programming that another foists on you. A keen reminder:
“Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics…”
As the size and scale of our systems’ breakdowns becomes more apparent, I reach for simple ways to create a world of my longing. Daily, I set an intention to attract what I want in my life by reflecting it into the world. Quantum entanglements abound, and who can know what impact are possible? It feels empowering to think of one small act making an outsized difference in the world, as the butterfly effect has shown. (Shane Parrish writes a masterful piece on this.)
Authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman write in Good Omens, “It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.”
What if small, humble creations of beauty mattered? I believe they do, and so, alongside my devotions as a TreeSister Trustee and as a YOUth LEADing The World facilitator; to companion my writing, my Forest Bathing business, and my songwriting, I endeavor to carry something beautiful in my heart. From it, I strive to seed beauty in all its natural expressions. It becomes a talisman amid the forces that would have me feeling helpless and in despair.
I snowshoe along a trail, delighting in the creature tracks – deer, fox and mice – that reveal I am not alone.
I deposit forest offerings on granite outcroppings and at the base of trees. Forest offerings are homemade treat balls of honey, oats, seeds, nuts and other wildlife-friendly things I find in my pantry; a way of acknowledging the interconnectedness of life on this land. A way of saying thank you to the woodland biosphere that surrounds me.
Later in the afternoon, I escape my studio again for a walk along a coastal trail. I carry a haversack of flowers, sprigs, and berries leftover from a Christmas arrangement. I let my feet lead me to just the right place, a clearing on the town’s greenspace. As though the Dalai Lama himself requested it, I set about creating a mandala to adorn the landscape. Impermanence has a shiny side.
Along a stone wall, I arrange a heart-shaped berry wreath. I hope the passersby will see it as a sign. My writer’s imagination crafts the scenes:
“Not that bad, I s’pose,” a man in a red flannel shirt mutters to himself about his life.
“Oh, how lovely, like a kiss from the cosmos,” a woman declares to her labradoodle.
“What’s that, Mommy? Who put all those flowers on the snow?” a boy in a blue snowsuit shouts.
My earlier feelings of frustration and self-pity have dissolved, and I realize this: it was external noise, not who I am. I am beauty. Therefore, I see beauty and I create beauty.
Today, may the beauty that you are be what you carry in your heart.
“Maybe I didn’t know it then. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Didn’t know that there are times in a life that pass but retain a gleaming, which means they never die, and the light of them is in you still.”
– Niall Williams, from This is Happiness, by Niall Williams.