Accepting and embracing life’s impermanence is crucial to clear thinking.
A great deal of how you live is shaped by what you choose to pay attention to, often subverted by the dangling distractions thrown your way. When that happens, life becomes interrupted by external forces, taking your mind away from whatever is inside or in front of you.
Homer, an ancient Greek poet, told the story of Ulysses on a voyage. He needed to resist the bewitching song of the sirens that might cause his ship to sink. To avoid this he had his crew tie him up while they were ordered to plug their ears so they couldn’t hear the music. These days sirens are more powerful, luring us away all too easily, the sights on our screens more tantalizing, the earplugs now bringing only more diversions.
It’s hard these days to avoid being distracted by the sirens made lifelike by artificial intelligence. A Harvard Business Review article suggests we are interrupted every 40 seconds when we are staring at our computer screens. Our attention spans are heightened to what others want us to see, not ones we chose ourselves. We have a choice to make — to what or whom do we pay attention?
You can learn how best to live by staying awake to the lessons life shares every day. Think about the miracle of life when you wake up, open your eyes, and find yourself alive. Then the world opens before you — another day to start anew.
Anne Sexton’s poem “Welcome Morning” offers a simple, common tribute to a dawning day:
I woke up today to watch outside my window a single brown leaf floating to the earth from the tree in my backyard. It spoke to me of a few important truths about how best to live.
First, there’s the universal law that says everything changes, just as the once green leaf muted by time floated to the earth. It gave up holding on to a branch and once released didn’t panic but fell effortlessly to the earth in a twirling dance. It fulfilled its purpose not by resisting falling but when the time was right, letting go. The lesson is that in the seasons of every life, there are appropriate times to hold onto things and times to let go.
I remember how the theme of falling leaves is often part of Charles Schulz’s comic strip characters. Some dance as the leaves fall, others mourn. Snoopy the beagle first wants to resist letting go of a branch, then sadly realizes that resistance is futile. Watching one leaf falling he comments: “First leaf to fall. First leaf to die,” a recognition of a universal reality facing everyone who departs this world. Snoopy defiantly says to himself, “I’d make a bad leaf,” acknowledging he doesn’t want to die either..
Second, I learned how one leaf joins with others to become nutrients for future plants, perhaps even a new tree to emerge in my backyard after winter recedes and spring emerges. New life arising out of the old is Earth’s joyful anthem to all creatures on this small planet circling a third-rate star somewhere in the cosmos stretching to the limits of our telescopes and beyond.
Third, leaves can be themes for joyfulness. Consider the poet Mary Oliver, who wrote about sitting in a tree trying to count the leaves. Her friends think she is foolish, but she says she’s “half crazy with the wonder of it — the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort.” But she understands a deep truth: “I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.”
I remember as a child collecting fallen leaves, putting each between wax paper, then ironing them shut, keeping them in a book. I’m not sure why I did so — their colors had faded and turned brown. Perhaps now I see what I did was trying to save the leaves from a fate that touches all of us, yet understanding deeper that still nothing remains the same forever.
Hold on. Put your ear to the ground below. Listen to the rustling leaves caught by the autumn winds. Touch the brown earth. Remember spring as buds burst open and daffodils emerge from the seemingly barren ground. Then give praise for renewal.
The wonder years of children can be sustained by adults following the same great lesson taught in childhood — before crossing a street stop, look, and then listen. This sums up the wisdom of many traditions from many times and places — stay awake, pay attention, make your own choices about what to see, hear, and feel. This is why you are here.
