High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Direction’

March laughs, tossing her clouds all over the sky.  What a quick-change artist she is!  Today, the earth is all puddles, and robins fly fast and low across the fields, their song filling the warm air.  Only the shaded hills hint that yesterday this world was covered in snow.

I think March laughs because she knows where she is headed.  Winter can tug at her skirts all it wants; she is bringing in springtime and will not be denied.

That’s the key to transformation.  Roll where you’re headed with joy.  Let the storms come.  They’re a part of the great drama and your arrival at your destination will be all the more triumphant for having overcome them.

Smack dab in the middle of winter, the teeny, tiny buds began to dream.  It was their first little inching toward waking.  And it was a very delicate time.

Their mother, who had raised several generations, smiled as she sensed their quickening.  Right now, she knew, their dreams were little more than soft, pink wisps.  But as the days went by, the color would deepen and take form, casting before the little buds the images of the flowers they would become.

That was how it worked.  They dreamed how they would be and followed the images into the tomorrows until one day they found themselves shyly opening into the light of the springtime sun.

But along with her joy at their first sign of life, the mother was a little concerned.  A mid-winter thaw had come along, you see, and was lasting a bit longer than usual.  The warmth was exciting the buds and speeding up their dreams.   Unless they were cooled down a bit, the buds would open too soon.

It was vital, she knew, to let a dream find its direction.  If you rushed off in pursuit of it before it had gained some solidity, you risked skipping over some important steps.

She shielded the tiny buds from the sun’s rays as best she could with last season’s remaining leaves.  But still, the warmth wore on.

One morning, just as the mother was beginning to feel some genuine worry, a fine, red-tailed hawk settled in the tall spruce above her on the hill.  She greeted him and as the two of them talked, she told him about her concern for the little buds growing on her branches.

The old hawk kept a nest in the spruce and he was quite fond of the sight of the azalea blossoming in the spring.  He thought for awhile about her plight, and then suddenly he had an idea.  He would go speak with his friend, the North Wind.

With a few flaps of his mighty wings, he launched himself from the spruce’s high boughs and, catching an updraft, soared high into the air.  Off to the west, he had seen a weather front developing.  Maybe his friend could nudge it in the azalea’s direction.

The next afternoon, the mother plant saw the hawk again, circling overhead. “Don’t worry, Little Mother,” he called.  “I ordered a treat for your babies, and it should be here any minute.”  Then he disappeared from view, laughing.

A treat?  The mother was still wondering what he might have meant when the first few snowflakes drifted down from the sky.  Then more came, and more.  And she opened her leaves wide to cup up the frosty white flakes, smiling with gladness.

I wandered off the trail the other day to get to the side of a lake that I’d never seen before.  The brush was heavy, but finally I reached the lake’s edge and picked my way along it for awhile, led on by the lure of still more promising views.

When I finally turned back toward the main trail, I suddenly discovered I was lost.  I tried to retrace my steps, to get back to the rise, but in every direction I turned, I was  surrounded by swamp.

I figured I was maybe half a mile from the trail and had about an hour of daylight before the sun would sink behind the hills.

After that, finding my way out of the thick woods would be a truly harrowing venture. There was no time to lose.  The only way out was through the swamp.

I spent a few minutes looking for the shallowest, most narrow places.  And then I sloshed on through it and up the rise.  Near its top, I spotted a deer trail heading in the general direction of the main trail and I followed it through the brambles and brush.  I reached my destination just as the sun sank below the crest of the western hills.

All of us get lost in the woods sometimes.  The main thing is to trust your basic sense of direction and to keep on keeping on, even when you have to wade through a swamp.

“Why am I so happy now?” Once again, I asked myself the question that launched this blog.

Surrounded as I was by the fresh beauty of this almost-spring afternoon, finding answers was easy.  Blue sky, laughing brook, the soft pink haze of growing buds on the distant trees, the glorious white branches of the sycamores—who could want more?

I was doing one of my favorite things, connecting with nature, collecting bits of this instant of time with my camera.  I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to be doing.

Today is the three-quarter mark on my journey toward my goal: to make a nature photo every day for a year and post it online.  I wasn’t aware of that as I hunted images, though.  The satisfaction of realizing the milestone came later.

While I was taking photographs, I was totally in the flow of the activity, focused wholly on the moment, on seeing what was there before me with my practiced eye, hearing the crunch of leaves beneath my feet and the rushing of the stream and the singing of the birds.  I was feeling the gentle warmth of the sun on my face and the soft bite of the still-cool air.

Having a goal matters.  A goal gives you a sense of purpose and direction.  It keeps you focused on digging more deeply into your skill sets and strengths.  It teases you into developing your talents.  And as you see that the achievement of it is really only a matter of persistence, it motivates you to keep on keeping on.  It strengthens your will and determination.

But the journey itself is what opens the happiness valves.  The journey engages you and brings you into the present, into the only moment where you are truly alive, the only time when it is possible to take the next step.  And the next, and the next.  And each one is play, even when it is hard work.

Perplexed about how to choose a direction, the apprentice took his confusion to the shaman.  The old man’s leathery face took on a gentle smile as he replied to his student,  “Follow the path with heart.”

The young man pondered the wise elder’s advice.  Then, he cupped each choice before him invisibly in his hands, one at a time, holding it to his heart and listening to hear what his heart had to say.

He discovered each alternative had a different feel to it.  This first one was cool and light.  He set it aside and picked up the next.  It was heavy and dull, and he set it aside.  The third was pleasantly warm and seemed to have a magnetic quality to it, as if it were drawing him toward it.  He noted the feeling and set that choice down so he could weigh the final one.

As he cupped this last alternative in his hands and held it to his heart, suddenly he was enveloped in a radiant glow and he felt as if inaudible music was enveloping him.  This, he knew, was the song of his heart and as he heard it, all his confusion disappeared.

He set out on the path his heart directed him to take with great gladness, and at first the way was smooth and easy.  But as the days passed, the terrain grew rocky and the path narrow and steep.  The young man had to choose his steps with great care.   He began to grow light-headed and disoriented, and feared he would lose his balance.  Trembling slightly, he kept on, every step more difficult than the last.  He had to use all his knowledge and skill to find each next foothold.

One evening, the sky turned red and a fierce dust storm pummeled him.  He crouched shaking behind a boulder, exhausted from his long, arduous climb.  “What have I come to?” he asked himself.  “How can I go on?”

He remembered the pouch of water tucked beneath his tunic, and as he reached for it, he suddenly felt the beating of his heart.  “Follow the path with heart,” he thought to himself, hearing his teacher’s voice in his mind.  But now the words no longer spoke to the question of “which” but to the question of “how,” and as he heard them, he felt his courage rise within him.  And comforted by it, he fell asleep.

When he awoke, a new day had spread itself over the horizon, fresh and clear.  As he stepped from behind the boulder that had given him refuge, he saw he was at the crest of the mountain he had climbed, and a bubbling spring was cascading down a path that led to a village, shining in the morning light, below him.

He ended up settling in the village, where he learned music and healing arts, and all the people loved him and children loved to play outside his door.

One day, when he had been there many, many seasons and was an old man with a leathery face, a perplexed youngster he had been tutoring came to him, asking how he could know the best direction for his life.  The old man’s face gently smiled as he looked into the young man’s eyes.  “Follow the path with heart,” the old man said.  “Follow the path with heart.”