We forget, don’t we?
When Winter comes (and come it shall) and the days shrink short whilst the nights stretch out and over all things, consuming the illumination we once knew, we forget. We forget warmth, we forget light, we forget that our bare skin once knew the air and our ears the song of bird and creatures that call treetops home.
We forget of hope, don’t we? We stand on the Solstice opposite this one, the December day of longest dark, and we forget to remember, so far removed from this day, this Summer Solstice, this packing of shine inside the same 24 hours we’re given.
What if we didn’t?
What if we turned ourselves to preppers, to those weary few who plan for the darkness, who collect the accoutrement of survival and store it away for the inevitability they are only too aware of? What if we did as bears do, call it hyperphagia and begin some feeding frenzy that will sustain us, only gobbling light and hope, beauty and glow, instead of calories? Only storing calm courage instead of fat to get us through the long cold months where we cannot find the sun.
I think of Buddhism now, this longest day of the year, this set of hours with more light than any other for this Northern Hemisphere. I think of how in a world of such fleeting and ephemeral pleasure, some things must be more intentional. Some things must be cultivated daily, practiced, some things require devotion and dedication and a bit of discipline so lacking in our world these days. I think of two concepts more than any others. I think of metta, the idea of loving-kindness, and I see how its fingers are so closely intertwined with this storing of joy. We must plant these seeds of loving-kindness daily, for all around us yes, but for ourselves too. Maybe first, for we cannot love others if we do not love ourselves. We practice for access to it, not just when we need it like the light we so desperately crave in the depths of Winter, but always. We love, we give kindness, not just for the satiation of our future selves, those winter selves who will need it, but for us now for all things are better with it.
I think too of lungta, the energy of the windhorse who features so prominently on the prayer flags we hang. This is life force, and it is built by our right actions, by our awareness more than all things. That’s what we need now, when times are not hard, when light is ample rather than fleeting, when warmth comes and stays and we shiver not alone in our homes. We practice this energy, we embrace it, and we let it fill us for when it will surely go.
We just move too swiftly through the times in our life when all things feel well. We’re distracted by the joy of it, we’re so caught up in the feeling of that freedom that I think we forget to notice, to slow, to remember when we did not feel the way we feel. We’re passive through it, float as though dropped stick on river meandering, we bounce over the bubbling whitewash of our days, we lay back and extend our arms and before awareness sinks, we’re in Autumn and the light slowly fades once more. We do this, year after year, always promising ourselves on the frosty peaks of frozen mountains in the deepest depths of the coldest seasons that next time, next time, we will soak it in more, we will pay more attention, we will hold and hold until it becomes us.
We don’t, though. Summer comes and we’re lost in the whirlpooling eddy of it all, perhaps we even complain at the heat that stifles and arrives so soon after the chill. We sweat and wish we were not, we hope for clouds to dim some of that sunshine, we crave stormy sky and rainfall. We forget to store it, we forget to save it for when we need it most.
What if this time were different?
This time we stop being passive, we stop our collective amnesia at what Winter will always bring. This time we actively store it, we soak up joy like sponge, we prepare, biologically, spiritually, intentionally.
We chase the light, we capture it with photograph or video. We write poetry about the sunset and the way it spills gold on the surfaces beyond us, we record the songs of our feathered friends, we follow our curiosity down each dry road our bare feet can walk down, we sit on the decks and we saturate ourselves in the warm breeze and smell of rainfall rolling over the mountains on the far horizon. We speak of petrichor, and close our eyes as we inhale it. We save that scent, we name it and pull open the drawer of our memory to set it down softly. We label that drawer, In Case of Emergency we dub it, and keep it handy for when that smell has gone—snowfall carries so little scent, after all.
This time we store, we keep, we save, we remember.
This day is longer than all those before it, all those that will follow. The light tonight will stay, it will linger long past the hours you expect it to fail, and there will come a moment, you’ll know it when it arrives, when all the air goes soft and still and something in you goes quiet with it. That moment is your drawer, your safe place to keep it all. That moment, is what December will be yearning for.
Somewhere, someone will sit in silence on a front deck they usually walk right past, and that air will surprise them in brand new ways. Somewhere, someone will surf their hand out the window as they hurtle down a highway. They will feel, for a tiny fraction of a moment, that they are one little body in a great big world in motion. Somewhere, someone will hear the train whistle in the deepest part of midnight’s stillness, and feel it calling them like a church bell to some brand new religion that needs no buildings at all. Someone will smell the rain before it arrives, they will call thunder soundtrack, they will feel the buzz of electricity as lightning stands their hair at attention, they will stand there, and they will just allow it to come.
Maybe that someone is you.
Tell us of your light, the pieces you save, those you hold onto. Tell us what you keep safe inside you, what you reach for in those dark recesses of the coldest seasons that come.
When December’s pale light returns and the darkness stretches out long, I want us to reach into those drawers together. I want to hear what you kept.
I love you all.
Be good.
