“If I had to summarize the entirety of an enlightened person’s life in a few words, it would be complete acceptance of what is. As we accept what is, our minds are relaxed and composed while the world changes rapidly around us.”
– Sunim Haemin, from The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down
The Weight of Distance
I am sitting at my kitchen table, with the greeting card in one hand and my pen in another. As I write down a birthday wish, I carefully measure each word I choose. I keep it intentionally short, hoping my brevity will make my message more likely to be read, more likely to be heard in the heart I’m hoping to reach.
I sign my name and lick the envelope closed.
Then I break. I crumble to the floor in a heap and wail.
I want to be in person to deliver this birthday wish, just as I want to be in person for ballgames, for Christmas gatherings, for an ordinary occasional picnic in the park.
But these things are no longer an option.
An Unexpected Theme in Memory
I stay on the floor a few minutes. I feel the weight of all I’m missing by this distance. But I can’t linger here forever, so I force myself up.
I check what’s next on my to-do list: “Memory practice.” I look up my list of words to review today.
And for the first time, I notice a theme among the poems and quotes I’m memorizing. It’s not a theme I consciously chose at the beginning of this year (if so, it would have been Curiosity, my One Word of the Year), but oddly enough, or curiously enough, perhaps this unconscious theme has been choosing me.
For example, this week’s words are:
“There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.”
– Charlotte Joko Beck
Last week’s words were:
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”
– Joseph Campbell
I’m still curious. I glance back at other quotes I’ve been memorizing.
Two months ago I began memorizing:
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
– Vaclav Havel
And in February, I’d chosen:
“Accept—then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy.”
– Eckhart Tolle
Choosing Acceptance, Again and Again
Yes. There is definitely a theme weaving through these pieces: Choose acceptance.
I know I’ve been resisting, struggling to accept what life has placed before me, clinging to things I wish were different. I still don’t want to believe how things have unraveled. Big things. And then smaller things that also changed, as they rippled out in the wake of the bigger things.
Yet the words on my memorization list urge me forward, encouraging me to face the reality that is here, not the dream I had planned. Make the best of what is, not what could have been.
I turn again to the lines I’m committing to memory, words that almost feel like a plea:
“When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly.”
– Patrick Overton
With these words echoing in my heart, I put on my shoes and walk outside to the mailbox as it waits for me. I place the birthday card inside the box, raise the small red flag, and send the card on its way with all my love into the darkness of the unknown, trusting that it, too, will land somewhere solid, into the places I can’t be.
And if it can’t land there, I trust that it will somehow learn to fly, just as I am having to learn. One day at a time. One quote at a time.
Share your thoughts in the comments.
