Murmurations

Life is filled with wonder, mystery and awe, and it is filled with infinite cycles of beginnings and endings. There are ceaseless

of breaking and healing, dancing and grieving, loving and losing, birth and death — seasons turning like a wheel that never stops.

Life is impermanent

…one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable. We will die, everyone we love will die, the organization will end, the nation will come apart, the system will collapse. The teacup will break. The end has already happened in our minds, our imaginations, our predictions; it is implied by the very pattern of our existence, which we understand to be impermanent.

— Adrienne Marie Brown, Murmurations: Breaking is a Part of Healing

So how do we hold all of this impermanence in our broken teacup without succumbing to constant grief? I find it helpful to consider how the seasons turn in the natural world around me. Spring is a time of birth and rapid growth, summer a time of maturation and fruition, autumn a beautiful time of harvest and letting go, winter a time of rest. Just as I cannot stop the seasons from turning, I cannot hold onto a single moment or time or thing. Change happens everywhere all the time.

So I spend a lot of time pursuing joy, awe, and wonder in everyday life. Finding beauty in a fallen branch, noticing how some of the leaves on a bush beside my walking path are already turning fall colors, soaking in the fleeting beauty of flowers in a garden, watching rain fall, listening to music that gives me goose bumps, talking and laughing with friends and family, saying “I love you,” as often as I can.

I would say that the task of life and the task of human evolution and the task of individual well-being is to connect to things that are larger than the self. And I think that’s what awe does, it opens your mind

…

So, find the larger things in life that give you goosebumps and go after those with force and you’ll be okay.

— How Awe Leads Us to Purpose and Meaning, Q&A with psychologist Dacher Keltner

How do you experience the ceaseless murmerations and cycles of life?

May you walk in beauty.

Note: Photos today are a mix of photos I made at Noerenberg garden one evening this week, on my walks in the neighborhood, and through the windshield of our car on a rainy day last week.