Happy Earth Day, readers!
On this day, when we take a moment to honor our planet and the earth beneath our feet (or paws), I want to share a post about our special, inextricable relationship.
WE RISE AND WE FALL
“Families are always rising and falling in America.”
In this life, there are peaks, and there are valleys.
Sometimes, we fly high in life. Things come easily.
Other times, we’re down in the dumps. Where everything is a struggle.
Like the stock market, we rage towards higher, ever loftier levels. We push the boundaries of what is possible, and we hold dearly to the momentary euphoria.
And, also like the market, we descend into inevitable periods of depression and despair.
IT’S ALL A CYCLE
This is my first post in over a month. I’m currently in one of those valleys (or depressions), so I was not in a position to write more regularly.
This upcoming Thursday, April 25th, will mark the two-year anniversary of losing my mom.
To make matters more difficult, I’m currently dealing with an unknown medical issue afflicting my dog, Simba. He had two seizures in the middle of the night, and for the past three weeks I have not been myself.
But here’s my point: all of this is cyclical.
There are moments when we triumph.
Where we feel the love in the air, our jobs and relationships are thriving, and everything feels effortless.
We should celebrate them — for ourselves and others!
And then there are moments that are challenging.
Where life tests you. It questions your convictions. It chips away at your resolve.
We should accept that these trying times are a part of life, too!
RETURN TO THE EARTH
In my yoga classes, when students are inhaling into a backbend pose (like Cobra or Locust), I often cue to lower back down to the mat by saying, “return to the earth.”
We rise, and we fall.
Like birds in flight, we are born and aspire to defy gravity. We reach for the stars and dream of greatness.
But we will always be connected to the earth. We will always return to it.
“But green is the color of earth, of living things, of life…
We deck our halls with it and dye our linens. But should it come creeping up the cobbles, we scrub it out, fast as we can. When it blooms beneath our skin, we bleed it out. And when we, together all, find that our reach has exceeded our grasp, we cut it down, we stamp it out, we spread ourselves atop it and smother it beneath our bellies, but it comes back. It does not dally, nor does it wait to plot or conspire. Pull it out by the roots one day and then next, there it is, creeping in around the edges.
Whilst we’re off looking for red, in comes green. Red is the color of lust, but green is what lust leaves behind, in heart, in womb. Green is what is left when ardor fades. When passion dies. When we die, too.
When you go, your footprints will fill with grass. Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold dear will succumb to it. Your skin. Your bones. Your virtue.”
-The Lady in The Green Knight [emphasis added]
We rise, and we fall.
We experience joy and pain. We laugh and cry. We live and die.
These are the cycles of life.
I grant you this: accepting it doesn’t make it any easier.
I wish that I still had my mom. I wish that Simba was pain-free (and perhaps, hopefully, he is).
I wish for many things.
But this is life.
It’s beautiful, and it’s painful.
The beauty makes the pain more tolerable, and the pain reminds us to hold dear to all the beauty that surrounds us.
So I enjoy every moment that I get with Simba.
Every moment that I get to teach.
That I get to write and share my life (the beauty and pain) with you.
Some day, at some point, it will be the last time.
And then we’ll return to the earth.