....do I want to suffer?

Yogis,
Here in the mid-Atlantic it has been a relatively balmy winter. Typical days rising into the forties, with only occasional nights dipping below freezing. Instead of a frozen tundra we are clomping through mud with green sprouts popping their heads out through leaf cover that has yet to decay. A dandelion bloom even smiled at me from my front yard on one of our recent sixty degree days.

When I mention it to others, many respond that it does seem odd, but they don’t mind not being freezing. I understand. I too am uncomfortable with cold on my body. Even in the 40’s I wear long underwear under my jeans and a scarf around my neck, yet I am somehow bummed. I am feeling gypped.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I would want to be uncomfortable for two months with frozen fingers and toes, but I am coming to some realizations. The reason spring is so extraordinary for me is because of the stark contrast to where I have just been. The colors of the bluebells where once there was only a dull brown. The feeling of warmth on my cheeks, chapped by the bite of the icy wind on morning runs. Bird’s voices filling the previously quiet air.

We live in a world of dual forces. For every energy there is its opposite opposing force, without which life would feel comfortably numb.

I notice that it’s only after I have been sick where I truly appreciate the gift of health. Of waking in the morning with a body ready for whatever I bring its way. Without injury, something as miraculous as being able to do a yoga practice is taken for granted.

When a sorrow so deep drops us to our knees, it is only because we have lost one who swam in the well of love we carry in our very center.  If offered, would I choose a life with no sorrow if it meant I couldn’t feel the exquisite shiver of newly found love? Without one we cannot taste the other.

The Buddhist monk and beloved teacher Thich Naht Hanh once said that he would never want to live in a world without suffering. At first glance that seems incredulous. Who wants to suffer? Who would knowingly choose a path which will undoubtedly have pain as one of its traveling companions?

I would.

For without rainstorms there can be no rainbow. If life were always sunny, we wouldn’t know the moon. And isn’t it from our most challenging times that we emerge wiser and more human?

At times I watch as I constrain my tears of grief while allowing those of laughter to pour freely. Why? Are they not both salty and warm, each flowing from the same eyes that watch this world of ours pass by with all its waves?

‘Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift’  ~Mary Oliver

Om,
SARAH