It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn
The other day, I took 2 photos from the studio of the most gorgeous sunset I've seen in a while. I stood outside shortly before going in -- stopping outside my car to take it in. I was especially cognizant of the fact that the sun is setting later than it has been, because I normally only notice that the sun is setting earlier in the fall and totally miss the way the days get longer.
The other day in an intro to meditation class, I learned that our task as we meditate is to notice when our minds drift out of the present moment and then come back to ourselves through our breath with self compassion and warmth. The teacher told us that, like the statue of the Buddha, we are welcome to make a small smile as we meditate. This little smile was a surprisingly useful cue for me. Returning both to the breath and the little smile flooded my body with warmth and love.
We are on the threshold of profoundly dark times. Things get a lot worse before they get better. Florence and the Machine was stuck in my head as I let the gorgeous sunset flood my body with warmth crying out: "It's always darkest before the dawn."
I entered the studio and saw the light through the window and, just for a moment, I peered through the threshold to the other side. It's becoming more and more apparent that the only way out is through 1, so I embraced this moment of "peering through" as practice towards training my eyes on how to see in/through the dark.
Driving home, I remembered once again the end of Ross Gay's (with a Bon Iver sound backing collab!) poem Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude -- words that rattle my heart.
Soon it will be over,
which is precisely what the child in my dream said,
holding my hand, pointing at the roiling sea and the sky
hurtling our way like so many buffalo,
who said it’s much worse than we think,
and sooner; to whom I said
no duh child in my dreams, what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you. Every day.
What guides you through with integrity? What fills you with love? With loving kindness? What fills your cup -- like really fills your cup?
If 2025 is the year of crying at sunsets, then I think I'm on the right track.
I just looked this up, and apparently the original attribution is Robert Frost which surprised me. I hear this all the time in movement spaces. Regardless, this (much like "the body keeps the score") is always an annoying return to reality. Like... what do you mean I can't just wiggle my way out and around this??↩