Boys in blue snuggling
Trees in pink around a lake
The Americans
Monday, April 11, 2016
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Beauty in the transience
It's cherry blossom season here in Seoul. As I write this, I'm looking out my window to Seokchon Lake, studded with white and pink blossoms around the perimeter:
It's magical, really. All these trees that look like, well - "normal" trees during the year, suddenly bloom into pink majesty to herald the start of spring. It was particularly stark for me last year, coming from a silent meditation retreat in Bali to a panoply of pink in Seoul. Tyler and I would regularly walk around the lake on date nights, and I had no idea the trees were cherry blossoms.
Needless to say, I had a big hit of cherry blossom fever last year (as shown in the exhibit below):
And I wasn't the only one. Photos of cherry blossoms took over nearly every Instagram feed of friends I followed. When I talked to one friend about the best places in Seoul to view them, she said something like: "I wish they would invent some way to make cherry blossoms stay in bloom the whole year through!"
I understood her sentiment. These photos don't do the beauty of these blossoms justice... and picture them throughout the whole city.
Yet something in me stirred when she said that. Because it seems that would defeat the point.
True, I had just come from a silent meditation in Bali. We did morning yoga on the beach, and by the third day of this, I realized part of the deep learning was separate from the physical movement -- it was about noticing that no morning was ever the same; no moment even. The clouds shaded the sun a different way each passing minute, creating a different sunrise; the waves breathed back and forth. Everything was movement; nothing stayed the same.
As someone who loves to control everything, that sunrise yoga experience was the first time I really started to understand there's beauty in the transience. It is precisely because the cherry blossoms don't bloom all year that it's especially beautiful.
The more I researched the history and cultural significant of cherry blossoms, the more I realized this to be true. In Japan, cherry blossoms are a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life, coming from Buddhist influence. I learned that "the transience of the blossoms, their exquisite beauty and volatility, has often been associated with mortality, grace, and ready acceptance of destiny and karma; for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic." The blossoms are incredibly delicate; rain or strong wind easily send the blossoms flying (magical in its own way... in fact, I'm realizing one of my favorite ways to experience the blossoms here is in the rain, blossoms in the wind and hardly anyone else around).
The more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be a linkage between beauty and transience. And once you try to remove that transience (say, by making fake plastic flowers to keep a rose in perfect bloom), the less beautiful that item is.
I realized there are parallels of this in parenting. Recently, one of my Facebook friends posted a picture of her son, with the caption: "I just want to flash-freeze him", with over a hundred likes. It's a sentiment I have as well, every time Elliot looks up and smiles at me. I'm already noticing how much he's changed over just ten weeks -- things like now realizing he can control his hands, rather than just being objects that float around beyond his ability to influence. And while he's currently in a super cute stage right now (so smiley!), I need to remind myself to stay in flow -- not trying to control and keep things as they are, while also not fast-forwarding ahead (still a challenge for me).
And so for now, my goal is to stay present, knowing that all things pass -- both the good and the bad, and that there's beauty in that. Tyler constantly reminds me that we're currently living a "peak life experience" -- particularly when I start to worry and obsess. The morning after I spent a good chunk of date night worrying about Elliot's weight and convinced we needed a plan once he became a mobile toddler, he sent me this poem, by an unknown author:
The poem makes me happy and sad. But mostly happy...especially when I can remember to stay in the moment and just relish the present.
It's magical, really. All these trees that look like, well - "normal" trees during the year, suddenly bloom into pink majesty to herald the start of spring. It was particularly stark for me last year, coming from a silent meditation retreat in Bali to a panoply of pink in Seoul. Tyler and I would regularly walk around the lake on date nights, and I had no idea the trees were cherry blossoms.
Needless to say, I had a big hit of cherry blossom fever last year (as shown in the exhibit below):
And I wasn't the only one. Photos of cherry blossoms took over nearly every Instagram feed of friends I followed. When I talked to one friend about the best places in Seoul to view them, she said something like: "I wish they would invent some way to make cherry blossoms stay in bloom the whole year through!"
I understood her sentiment. These photos don't do the beauty of these blossoms justice... and picture them throughout the whole city.
Yet something in me stirred when she said that. Because it seems that would defeat the point.
True, I had just come from a silent meditation in Bali. We did morning yoga on the beach, and by the third day of this, I realized part of the deep learning was separate from the physical movement -- it was about noticing that no morning was ever the same; no moment even. The clouds shaded the sun a different way each passing minute, creating a different sunrise; the waves breathed back and forth. Everything was movement; nothing stayed the same.
As someone who loves to control everything, that sunrise yoga experience was the first time I really started to understand there's beauty in the transience. It is precisely because the cherry blossoms don't bloom all year that it's especially beautiful.
The more I researched the history and cultural significant of cherry blossoms, the more I realized this to be true. In Japan, cherry blossoms are a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life, coming from Buddhist influence. I learned that "the transience of the blossoms, their exquisite beauty and volatility, has often been associated with mortality, grace, and ready acceptance of destiny and karma; for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic." The blossoms are incredibly delicate; rain or strong wind easily send the blossoms flying (magical in its own way... in fact, I'm realizing one of my favorite ways to experience the blossoms here is in the rain, blossoms in the wind and hardly anyone else around).
The more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be a linkage between beauty and transience. And once you try to remove that transience (say, by making fake plastic flowers to keep a rose in perfect bloom), the less beautiful that item is.
I realized there are parallels of this in parenting. Recently, one of my Facebook friends posted a picture of her son, with the caption: "I just want to flash-freeze him", with over a hundred likes. It's a sentiment I have as well, every time Elliot looks up and smiles at me. I'm already noticing how much he's changed over just ten weeks -- things like now realizing he can control his hands, rather than just being objects that float around beyond his ability to influence. And while he's currently in a super cute stage right now (so smiley!), I need to remind myself to stay in flow -- not trying to control and keep things as they are, while also not fast-forwarding ahead (still a challenge for me).
And so for now, my goal is to stay present, knowing that all things pass -- both the good and the bad, and that there's beauty in that. Tyler constantly reminds me that we're currently living a "peak life experience" -- particularly when I start to worry and obsess. The morning after I spent a good chunk of date night worrying about Elliot's weight and convinced we needed a plan once he became a mobile toddler, he sent me this poem, by an unknown author:
Hold him a little longer,
Rock him a little more.
Tell him another story
(you've only told him four).
Let him sleep on your shoulder,
Rejoice in his happy smile.
He is only a little boy
For such a little while.
The poem makes me happy and sad. But mostly happy...especially when I can remember to stay in the moment and just relish the present.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)