Life Lessons

Life presents us with many opportunities to learn.  There are lessons every day if we choose to pay attention.  Life lessons reappear with frustrating frequency if we don't learn from them the first time.  Recently, I've been reflecting about the big lesson I learned working with women in the San Francisco jail.  Before I started, I couldn't imagine how I would be effective, my background and life experience being so different from most of theirs.  Surprisingly (to me) I found that if I totally let go of any judgment of them, accepting them just as they were when they came to my class and if I totally let go of any expectations I might have of them after the class (like they might change), then somehow the class worked.  Buddhists would say I was being in "the present moment."  Whatever it was, it worked and the women seemed to benefit from the class and so did I.  Now I'm trying to apply this my life.  I find if I can simply be present and notice what is happening, how I am, all is well, or at least better.  If I can I let go of any story I've been telling myself then the internal drama goes away.  It worked yesterday taking care of our grandkids, just being present enabled me to enjoy them as they were.  Of course it's harder to do with family than with people I don't know.  I find I have to be patient with myself and repeatedly come back to the present while letting go of my judgments and expectations over and over.   Interesting it took me so long to apply this lesson to my life close at hand.   I have a sneaky feeling that any suffering I might experience will lessen greatly.  No judgments from the past, no expectations of the future, it's the way to be.  There really is nothing else but the ever-present present moment.

Fresh Eyes

The biggest gift of a trip might just be seeing home again with fresh eyes.  It is an example of the  neural accommodation I used to teach about using the example of smell.  You know how when you walk in a bakery there is usually a delicious smell of fresh baked goods?  Then, after a few minutes you don't notice it anymore?  The brain, which was initially overcome with bakery smell, has learned to not pay attention to the fresh baked molecules in the air and no longer responds, so one does not notice the smell.  It's called accommodation.  I was away from home visiting my sister for five days.  It was a great visit with lots of quality sister time and many fun adventures. Then yesterday I returned home to Berkeley on the cusp of a storm.  This morning everything here was fresh with an inch of new rain.  I have paid close attention to what I see around town with new fresh eyes.  I see here everything is very crowded;  the houses, the trees, the greenery.  And green is the predominant color, especially the new Spring green of the canopy of trees over MLK Street.  The hills are also very green.  My garden looks alive and thriving.  I noticed the dwarf peach tree is amazing, just coming into bloom.  My house looks spacious and open.  And then I found corners of clutter.  Now they're gone.  Time away is always fun, but the biggest blessing is really seeing home with fresh eyes.

February Blossoms

February always takes me by surprise here.  Maybe it was the weeks of constant rain that kept me inside.  Perhaps, I was distracted by the news and all that is wrong in the world when suddenly the amazing fecundity of the earth has taken my breath away.  Wasn't it just January, with short cool winter days?  The earth was sleeping, muddy and cold.  No leaves on the deciduous trees, nothing in my garden and now seemingly from one day to the next, there are blossoms all around.  While I wasn't looking the oxalis proudly grew, vibrantly verdant in my garden and the daffodils came up, pushing their gray-green leaves up around the stems of bright yellow flowers of happiness.  Now, I see trees covered in blossoms.  Suddenly I see rainbows of color:  pink magnolias, white magnolias, yellow acacias, pink camellias, white camellias, blooming bulbs of narcissus and fields of neon yellow oxalis.  Plum trees pregnant with fat red buds are ready to burst forth into bloom on the first warm day.  How is it possible I could forget to look for the rhythms of the earth that so sustain me and bring me such joy?  The early Spring beauty of February in Berkeley just snuck up on me this year.