The Freeze and the Thaw

It was a chilly one, this October morning. Cold and cozy days are my most favorite kind, and I loved walking amidst the still-frozen beauties of Nature, noticing the grace and poise with which they crystallized themselves in the morning frost. As I walked and snapped photos with my phone I was listening to a podcast called "Unlocking Us" by Brene Brown. In this particular episode Brene interviewed twins, Emily and Amelia Nagoski, about their important psychological studies of emotions and burnout. (Their book, Burnout, is amazing by the way, and I highly recommend it). 

So I was walking and listening, observing and considering their words, and I was just so struck by the frozen natural world around me. I noticed the most delicate branches, stems, leaves, and flowers glistening in their frozen coverings of ice. They were quiet, seemingly peaceful in their frozen forms, and yet I realized that this patience I was witnessing in nature arose from a sense of non-attachment to this particular state of being. 

Underneath the hard glittering shell of ice these plants were still very much alive. They were pliable and soft; even warm beneath the freezing ice blanket. They just allowed the ice to be there on top of them, weighing them down in some cases, holding them rigid in others. They just allowed. They seemed to realize that there was nothing to be done here but to simply be in this experience. This too, like all else, is transient. Freezes freeze; that's what they are supposed to do. The attachment to whether the freeze is good or bad, seasonal or untimely...this is what causes suffering. All things hold the inevitability of change. Our human bodies, our cities, the Earth--change is happening, and it is supposed to happen. 

I felt comforted and awed by these delicate forms of nature today, for they reflected such an important truth to me. We are all, of course, made of the same magical goodies--just represented in different forms.

May you freeze and thaw, bend and break, be challenged and supported, and remember the nature that you are.