Walking the Wall

The Navajo teach their children that every morning when the
sun comes up, it’s a brand-new sun. It’s born each morning, it lives
for the duration of one day, and in the evening it passes on, never to
return again. As soon as the children are old enough to understand, the
adults take them out at dawn and they say, “The sun has only one day.
You must live this day in a good way, so that the sun won’t have wasted
precious time.” Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good
way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness 

 This is a beautiful book, and, so far at least,
two chapters have made me cry. The chapter on Joy had me nodding and
saying yes yes yes to two thoughts–the preciousness of life, the idea
that a “sense of wonder and delight is present in every moment, every
breath, every step, every movement of our own everyday lives” (24); and
that choosing joy is just that–choosing–a choice. That we all have
burdens and it is our choice whether we lug them along, or lay them
down and connect with joy. The other chapter was on Taking a Bigger
Perspective, again dealing with the issue of choice, of what we are
going to do with the cards we are dealt. She reminds us that “Our
life’s work is to use what we have been given to wake up” and then goes
on to note, “If there were two people who were exactly the same–same
body, same speech, same mind, same mother, same father, same house,
same food, everything the same–one of them could use what he has to
wake up and the other could use it to become more resentful, bitter,
and sour. It doesn’t matter what you’re given, whether it’s
physical deformity or enormous wealth or poverty, beauty or ugliness,
mental stability or mental instability, life in the middle of a
madhouse or life in the middle of a peaceful, silent desert. Whatever you’re given can wake you up or put you to sleep. That’s the challenge of now: What are you going to do with what you have already–your body, your speech, your mind?” (30).
She goes on to point out that we can leave our spouses, change jobs,
find people who will agree with you…etc, “manipulate your
world”  but the same problems will follow you until you learn your
lesson and set them aside.

I like her use of waking up and going
to sleep that seems to cross both the books of hers that I have. Waking
up is living fully in the moment, experiencing everything, good and
bad, learning from both and moving on down the path; sleeping is how
she feels most people live their lives, using activity, noise,
entertainment, misconceptions, narrow-mindedness to avoid really living
life and growing by the challenges we face.

I need to let the
little irritations go, it’s such a waste of life to be annoyed that my
puppy eats my roses now and again, or  silly things like that.
Life really is full of beauty and joy, maybe if I practice on the
little things, it will be a habit when the big things happen.