Life’s Silver Linings

Tags

focus, holidays, hope, new year, perspective

As early as last week, I started hearing and reading references to how much 2020 “sucked”, and that folks couldn’t wait for the year to be over — so that we could all march into 2021 and forget about this year. It made me ask two questions —

• was there anything good that we could take from 2020 as we welcome 2021?
• how was 2021 going to become ‘magically’ different for us at the stroke of midnight on December 31?

I guess I wasn’t alone in noticing the emerging negative tone towards 2020. On Monday, my long-time twitter friend, @VegyPower messaged me to say that she had an “idea for the #SpiritChat conversation on Dec 27”. We talked over the phone, and sure enough, she was thinking about the “silver linings” amid all the storms that we experienced in 2020. Hence, this week’s topic was seeded. 

After my phone conversation with her, and as the week progressed, I did not have to think too much or too deeply about my own silver linings from 2020. For that matter, perhaps you won’t have to look too far to find them either. To begin, it may be helpful to ask some questions that invite us to reframe, refocus and revisit our perspective of 2020. For example, if you could take three positive ‘things’ forward from this year, what would they be? My suggestion would be to pick one ‘thing’ or ‘set of things’ each — for mind, body and spirit. Write the ‘things’ down on three sheets of paper. Add some bits of poetry, some doodles, or some photos, and maybe even create a “2020 Silver Linings” board. If you feel like it, now share your board with friends and family — who knows, it may inspire them to do the same. 

It is easy for the human mind to forget, to want to forget pain, and painful times. I often hear and read that most of us are attracted much more to pleasure than to pain. Hence, we tend to want to fill our lives with experiences that bring smiles, laughter and Joy. And yet, it is pain, suffering and death on an unprecedented scale that brought the best minds of Science together in 2020 to design, test, manufacture and distribute, not just one, but multiple vaccines, in record time, to fight the pandemic. In my mind, this  ‘coming together for a common goal’ is surely one silver lining from 2020. I am sure you can think of many more. 

Now, about the second question —  how will we use the silver linings, and even the dark clouds that we experienced in 2020 to continue to create better versions of ourselves in 2021? I haven’t seen my Aunt, with whom I have spent many a Diwali, Thanksgiving and Christmas in the past, at all this year. I picked up the phone and called her in the evening on Christmas Day. The phone rang a few times, and I was composing my voice mail in my head, when she answered. She had just returned from Christmas dinner from her son’s home and some wonderful family time with her three grand-daughters. We talked about the year, and about the year to come, and she was all excited about the second vaccine dose that is she is to receive in mid-January. But that wasn’t all. 

As we talked about 2020 and 2021, she said that she had spent a lot of time doing ‘spring cleaning’ in November and December. She had found a “folder” full of something, which had items that went back to 1967 – fifty three years ago. She asked me to guess what may have been in that folder? The best I could come up with was — “maybe they’re some kind of letters.” Close enough, she said. For the next hour or so, she then proceeded to tell me the story of the ‘long-distance romance through letters’ that happened  between her husband-to-be and her while she was in India and he was in Canada. It was quite a story, which I had heard for the first time — and I’ve known her for 34 years. 

Why do I tell you the story of this conversation? After I hung up the phone with her, it made me think of silver linings and the remarkable story that I had just heard. It also made me ask – what are the stories that 2020 has uncovered for us, from which we can learn and remember, so that 2021 can benefit from them. Will we remember stories of pain, of love, of joy, of suffering, of hope, of giving, of receiving, of tears, of laughter, and treat them all alike? Or will we choose to forget them, only to re-discover them in our heart’s folder many years, if not decades hence? 

The lesson of 2020, for me to remember, is that every moment of a fully lived life is a silver lining unto itself. What will you remember?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for a special conversation with the #SpiritChat community on 9amET / 730pm India, Sunday, Dec 27 2020 on twitter. My gratitude to @VegyPower for the inspiration for the topic (and some questions!). If you cannot join us in the hour, I wish you the best for the New Year. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

 

If we look closely enough, there are silver linings everywhere…

Spirituality and Big Questions

Tags

exploration, perspective, questions, spirituality

One frequent bonus of working at a national aerospace agency is that one gets to meet their fair share of ‘space travelers’. On completion of their missions, they visit the center, share their wonderful stories, photos and anecdotes from their travels. One purpose of their visits to the center is to thank the workforce for contributions to the completion of their successful mission. A related purpose is to provide inspiration to scientists and engineers, young and old, to continue their work in the support of space exploration and related missions.

I have been fortunate to meet my fair share of astronauts over the years. I rarely let an opportunity go by to meet one, get an autographed photo, or even get a photo taken with them if possible. To merely be in the same rarefied air with them and listen to their enthusiasm for humanity, the earth, and for exploration, often fuels me up with enthusiasm for my work.

Needless to say, when the opportunity came to meet lunar explorer and moonwalking astronaut Harrison Schmitt, I didn’t hesitate to sign up. I thought it was going to be similar to my past experiences with meeting astronauts, but I was “oh so wrong”. There was a unique energy about Dr Schmitt of Apollo17, the last Apollo mission flown by NASA in 1972, almost fifty years ago. He literally had the energetic “new baby” like bounce and the “overflowing child-like joy” that both my wife and I clearly felt.

I marveled at the fact that he was so full of enthusiasm, four decades and more after the tremendous feat of Apollo’s final twelve day lunar mission. It made me ask several questions. When I get to his age of 84, what events will I remember from ten or twenty or thirty or forty or even fifty years ago which will fill me with child-like Joy? What am I working on today, which will make a difference for future generations (of life explorers) in future decades? What can I do today, individually and as part of a team and community, which will inspire the future in some big or even small way? How am I making good use of my creative energy on a daily basis to advance humanity’s future?

Yes. Some of these questions may seem “big-picture” like — even grandiose. And yet, they were inspired within me by being in the presence of one of four remaining humans who have walked another celestial body. I share the ‘big questions’ with you in the spirit that some of the inspiration of Dr Schmitt — a geologist turned jet-pilot turned astronaut who just “happened to walk on the moon” — also rubs off on you.  I am not sure of the answers, but my hope is that these questions will cause us to pause in the midst of our daily challenges, some small and some seemingly big.

In our  search of the answers to our own big questions, we can re-frame our vision of the world. With new perspective  and new vision, we can rise above the urgent and focus on the truly important . With new vision, we can then ask some big questions related to spirituality. How do we know that a ‘greater power’, It, exists? If It does exist, what is its nature? Do we have ‘personal experience’ of It, or is it a belief that was given us? How do we allow It to influence or effect our lives, or do we?

Kumud

P.S. What are some ‘big questions’ that you often ask your own self? Share them with us in our weekly gathering in #SpiritChat on twitter, Sunday Nov 17 at 9amET / 7:30pm India. I will bring some questions, along with tea and cookies. We may even ask the big question – tea or coffee? Namaste – @AjmaniK

Astronaut Harrison Schmitt speaks about his adventures, asks some big questions, shares his photos from Apollo 17

On Light and Levity

Tags

levity, light, lightness, perspective, spirtuality

Two books – “Questions for the Dalai Lama” (library digital edition) and “The Mastery of Love” (library analog edition) merged into a powerful stream this week. “Light and Levity” emerged from reading them concurrently and alternately, interspersed with a few notes from walking among the profusion of Life springing up in some new areas of the local forest…

And then one day we will wake up and decide that we are done with punishing them for their long past mistake(s). We have been carrying this burden of being judge and jury for as long as we can remember. They may no longer even be the person that we think or imagine they were. For all intents and purposes, the person who heaped all that hurt and pain and suffering and grief upon us, all of which was justifiable and (still may be) very real for us – may be long ‘dead’ and gone. Yet, we remain. Transfixed by the past.

We may not admit it, but, to a large extent, we all choose the burdens that we wish to carry – and we have been carrying some of these burdens for so long that they have become part of our identity. We cannot imagine our forward motion or movement without this burden. The burden lowers our center of gravity and may even give us (temporary) added stability, like the sandbags that we throw in the back of our trucks to give us traction on icy pavements. But, is winter not yet over for us? Did we forget that it is spring time, the ice has melted, and that it’s okay to shed those sandbags which do not serve any more purpose?

Yes. Gravity has a purpose, but so does levity. When gravity threatens to whelm us, wash our joys away in an emotional current like the swiftly moving river swollen temporarily with overnight rain carrying away everything in her path – levity and light can be a safe haven for us.

We can choose a different perspective. We can choose to lighten our burden and reframe our vision. Instead of looking down upon ourselves in gravity, or looking behind at the hurts and pains of our past, we can reframe our view. We can bridge the wisdom of levity with the compassion of the future.

A change in perspective is often our friend. It can remind us to be kind to our own selves, to treat our own selves with a bit less gravity and a bit more levity. Consider: if we forget how to occasionally laugh at our own selves and smile at our own infirmities and frailties, how will we find the courage to chose to lighten our dead-weight burdens?

Light and levity beckon to us. They are like the steps leading up to ‘Indian Hill’ that come into view as we round the blind corner on the trail, on a day when we had only planned to ‘walk the flats’ to rest our aching feet from a week of walking the forest…

What is a seeker to do when invited? To climb or not to climb? Is That even a question?! Do I even need to describe the new light and levity gained from walking the forest at the top of That hill?

Kumud

P.S. Join us in #SpiritChat Sunday May 1st at 9amET (USA) / 1pm UTC for our weekly twitter gathering ~ Topic: Light and Levity ~ Hosted by @AjmaniK ~ Light, Levity, Lightness and Perspective will be our themes for May…