Seasons of Life

I love the seasons and the changes they bring. Where I grew up it was a tropical island and we had only the rainy season and the dry season. So when I first moved to London, I used to love it and now living in North America I still do. But now changes in the seasons mean something to me other than its beauty. Perhaps aging has brought that about. I entered my forties two years ago but even before that my body almost felt like it was starting to loose it's vitality and strength that I once possessed. Each passing year my body made it more and more clear to me that perhaps it's entered into a new season.

So when I see the seasonal changes, I see my body and it's changes in it. I feel the spring and the summer for my body is gone and its entered fall. Fall is my favorite season, followed by winter. If I follow the seasons, then my body will deteriorate over the next couple of decades before it enters it's last season of winter, where it will weaken and age that it will die. The irony is that even though I used to love fall and winter, I am not sure that I like the changes that my body is going through. I used to love the seasonal changes in color, falling leaves, cooling of the warm summer air and the cold and the snow and the emptiness it used to bring. But I am almost saddened and frightened by it when it comes to my body.

Is it the not knowing what would happen? Or is it the anticipation of the inevitable that is making me nervous? I've been pondering on this the last few weeks. I think to some degree it is a bit of both. I am not sure as to what would happen. Life is not predictable that way.


Yes we see our parents getting old and dying; that happened with grandparents. But each time we moved on. Somehow those experiences and emotions we felt (or rather I felt) didn't seem to take a hold on me. But now I look back and think and feel. Perhaps it's not something I ought to do. But I find myself self drifting off these memories and in some ways see myself in them. I can't help it. I think that's what makes me sad and scared. But then as I said there is guarantee that my life would turn out the same. But then there is the possibility that it will.


I know what my teacher would say. If you can do something about it then do but if not let it go. In some ways I cannot do much about it but I also feel that I can do much about it too. Much about it in the way I live my life right now. In how I respond to things right now. But then again, I feel sad and frightened, emotions which are not good and probably will not be a good way to respond in the moment. But I cannot do much about it. They feel like little dark clouds that come and hang over for a time and drift away. Then it clears again only to arrive back again.


It's been a tough ride, especially this year. Quite a number of people known to me have died during the last 12 months. My dad got pretty sick in April out of the blue and still recovering with no end in sight. My cat sitter died only last week. These experiences have left me feeling 'blue'. Also how my family members have dealt with my dads sickness has also left me feeling scarred. Perhaps I need to give myself sometime to gather itself around these emotions and experiences. But life is funny....it has its own pace and I don't have much control over it. So I feel like I'm being bombarded with these emotions and experiences, chunked into a short period of time.


So I am not yet enjoying this time in my life yet. My husband says this is the time in our lives, when most people who are close to us, like our parents and uncles and aunts will die. Yes it's their winter time just as it is our fall. But I'm not sure my heart has gotten accustomed to that reality. I guess I am going to have to be patient with myself and my heart most of all. It's tough. It's tough to have to face the reality of aging and it's tough to face sickness and its tough to see your loved ones going through it. It's tough to face death. Last year I had two of my closest hospice patients die. Seeing them through it was tough. I didn't think it was like that at the time. But maybe it was even though I didn't feel it at the time. I have stopped my visits to the hospice patients because I feel sad now. I feel disease.


I feel the same with myself. A certain amount of sadness, disease and fright. I maybe repeating myself but I am writing everything that I feel and have felt over the last few weeks and perhaps months.

 

Irma

Hurricane Irma hit the US last weekend. Before that, it created much destruction in the Caribbean islands. It was a category 5 storm with sustained winds of more than 185 miles per hour for the longest time in the history of storms, as per experts. It also held it's strength for a long period of time. I had never followed the path of a storm before but this one intrigued me and so I did.

What was most interesting was how the storm, as it travelled across the Caribbean into the US, almost felt like a living thing. At least for me it did. It had a path and boy did it travel that with persistent intention. It made me wonder what makes a hurricane and how does it keep to a path and how does is sustain it's strength. The science behind was fascinating. A hurricane required certain conditions for it to become one. Air pressure, water temperature, currents, presence of water and or land are some of it. At least that's what I picked up. It was the warm waters of the Atlantic and pressure systems that created Irma. Had it hit land then the hurricane would have lost it's power. The eye keeps it power as it travels over warm waters and when it hit the land it looses power. This is why the US didn't have the amount of devastation they were expecting. It hit Cuba the night before and the eye of the storm lost it's power and was not able to gather it's strength before making landfall in the US. But until then the eye kept creating an recreating itself many times over the course of it's path.

To me the hurricane reminded me of beings. Humans and otherwise.

Buddhist don't believe in a self or a soul or a permanent entity that moves from one life form to another. It is the causes and conditions that shape how and what and when things move. For example, for me to be born as a human being, there were certain causes and conditions present. Without those there wouldn't have been "me" as you and I know it to be. It is also the causes and conditions that sustain me as I move along in my life. Causes and conditions are within and without. Internally, my thoughts, actions and words shape and guide my life's path and externally people I live with, friends, places I live in and many more conditions also keep modifying that path. Absence of one or more conditions can alter "me" and "my life" considerably.

It made me realize, in some ways, how little control we have of me and my life. Just like Irma hitting land, I could get hit by a car and die. I mean it just made me think how vulnerable we are and how much we are shaped by conditions. But we may not even know what they are, because there are so many of them. We don't have the capacity to notice all of them. We move and think so fast that most of these conditions take effect and become the next round of causes in a matter of seconds, perhaps even milliseconds. I was simply fascinated.

It also make me think how much effort and a keen sense of awareness we must cultivate in order to make any change to our direction in life. Not only it's enough to change the external conditions but also it's imperative we change our internal conditions, mostly our thoughts. Our thought has much power but recognizing the thought and it's color and shade and gradient takes much effort. Without that we can be tossed around quite a bit within and without. We will keep inventing and reinventing ourselves either as humans or other beings in different realms.

Somehow there has to be the nullifying of causes and conditions in order for this continuum to come to an end like Irma did by Monday. To me it made me realize that Nibbana is a possibility. At least the science of it :))