Believing is Seeing

“Light is the left hand of darkness/Darkness the right hand of light . . .”

I read that couplet some years ago in a novel by Ursula LeGuin which took its name from the first line. The novel was interesting enough, but it was the name ~ the image ~ that captured my attention and imagination, and this couplet that has stayed with me all these years ~ because, like the yinyan symbol, it is a very evocative way to think of the interconnected duality of life, and how darkness is as necessary to life as light.

I’ve been trying very hard for the last few years to see the “silver linings,” among the dark clouds of life, to internalize and live what I’ve always known intellectually ~ that every “mistake” teaches you something valuable, every “wrong” choice brings with it the knowledge you need to help make the “right” choice the next time, and with every crisis  outside your control comes at least one component that you can control, even if it’s only the way you choose to react.

Sounds so simple and straightforward, doesn’t it. Most truths do ~ it’s the unwavering belief and the day to day, moment to moment exercise of that belief that gives you trouble.

When something “bad” happens, our first reaction (or mine, anyway) is almost always negative ~ hurt, anger, sorrow, fear. That’s a reflex, I think, and a normal one ~ negativity begets negativity, like calls to like. Fortunately, as thinking human beings, we are not at the mercy of our “natural” reactions ~ we have the capacity, after that initial response, to choose to perpetuate the negative energy or we can choose to look for and focus on the positives of the situation ~ and there are always some, even if they sometimes seem insufficient, at that moment, to balance out the others. We have the ability to change our reality simply by realizing that what we send out into the universe comes back to us, multiplied, and make our choices accordingly.

The biggest mistake I think people make is to go through life trying not to make any mistakes ~ and then beating themselves up for it and/or giving up when they do. We have too well internalized what is really a fallacy: that mistakes and bad choices lead to failure. Often, they do ~ The fallacy lies in ending the statement ~ and the endeavor ~ with “failure,” as if that condition, once achieved, were permanent.

It is not. No situation or condition is permanent or immutable unless you choose to believe it so. In reality, no success has ever been achieved without failures preceding it, each marking a spot on the map that ultimately leads to success.  The “mistake” is in looking at mistakes and “bad” choices as if they where wholly negative ~ they are not; they are simply one side of the yinyan ~ one side of the duality, the near dichotomy of life ~ and the foil against which the other stands out so clearly.

Or as the Chinese philosophy from which the symbol is taken holds, the image symbolizes the reality of  “how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only exist in relation to each other.”

Hurt, anger, sorrow, fear ~ we welcome none of these, especially when they grow out of our own “mistakes” ~ yet, without hurt how could one experience healing? without anger, how would one know serenity? without sorrow to measure it against, how would one recognize true joy? and without fear how well would one appreciate freedom from it?

Don’t let yourself be immobilized by the fear that you will make a mistake or “do it wrong” ~ you will do both, multiple times. I guarantee it. As long as you’re breathing and actually living your life, you will make mistakes and do things “wrong.”

So what?

Remember, just as light cannot be without darkness, so too, in every endeavor, there must be mistakes and failures if you are ever to achieve success.

(hmmmm . . . it occurs to me that I didn’t start this blog out with the intent of turning it into a pep rally ~ but then maybe that’s what it needed to be, and who am I to argue with the left hand of darkness?)

My best advice to you always (whether you want it or not):

Seize the day ~

Today is my beloved’s birthday, and this year, for the first time in a long time, I’d bought something to give to him on his birthday specifically for his birthday. Not that we don’t buy each other things, but up until recently we felt we really couldn’t afford to give each other birthday, anniversary, christmas gifts etc.

I put the emphasis on “we felt” because that was exactly what it was: a feeling. A belief. And one of the worst beliefs one can harbor.

But this year, I ordered some things for him online (which will get here a week late because somebody left it until the last minute ~ hmm, now who could that be?) and went to the mall to pick up a couple of other gifts for him, a chore that was lightened considerably for me (I hate going to the mall) and made much more fun by having some of my girls along.

So this morning, we woke relatively early for what is often the only day of the week we get to sleep in, and he got up and went to make the coffee as he usually does. I slept for a bit longer, knowing he likes at least a few minutes to himself when he gets up in the morning, and because I wanted him to think I was only making the bed and whatnot while I folded together his sweatshirt and the bob marly tee I’d gotten at the mall, and wrapped a bright ribbon around the “package” they made, tucking a new lighter I’d gotten him under the ribbon.

As I came down the stairs with it, he said good morning, with his back to me (his computer faces the stairs and he was on it), and I said good morning and how good the coffee smelled. Then, do you know what my dear love said he wanted for his birthday?

“Today is my birthday and I want to make one birthday request,” he said, still not looking at me.

I said “What’s that, my love?” with a smile in my voice as he turned and saw the gift for him in my hands. He frowned at me, then saw the lighter tied into the bow and laughed (it’s a joke between us how he’s always stealing my lighters ~ and then losing them).

But after he’d opened his gift and said thank you, he said: “but you know what my real birthday wish is? Next payday I want to put away $100 toward your iPod (that he’s planning to buy me for Christmas). I don’t want to get to Christmas and have you decide there’s some reason we can’t afford to get you an iPod.”

A legitimate worry, because it’s a bad habit of mine (or it used to be) to buy things they want for people I love and then (since I paid the  bills and handled the money and therefore knew “better” uses for it) basically deny them the same pleasure because whatever it was was “too expensive.” It’s a habit I learned from my mama, who still does it to this day, and one, I’m sorry to say, I passed on to some of my children. I wish I had known better before, and I hope they learn better before their little ones are old enough to start doing the same.

I say that because I also woke up with the sadness and worry, which is a constant thread that lingers behind everything else that takes up my days, about a very sad situation that’s going on between two people I love. A large part of the problem is that one of the two sacrifices most of the things that one wants and some of the things that one needs, even things that are medically necessary, for the other and their children, while the other does not think to do those things until it’s perhaps too late, and perhaps worse, doesn’t even acknowledge the sacrifice.

Now, I didn’t cut off my hair to buy him a fob for his beloved pocket watch, and he didn’t sell his watch to buy combs for my hair, and perhaps it’s just because the holidays are coming up, but it made me think of the O’ Henry story, this modern day gift of the magi: that my love’s first thought on his birthday was of something he wants to give to me.

Yes, parents sacrifice for their kids, that’s part of loving your children and teaching them to do the same when they grow up and have kids of their own. But another lesson children need to see and internalize to be happy in love when they’re grown is this: that lovers who truly love one another not only sacrifice for each other, but each also thinks of the other’s needs and wants first, and in so doing, shows that he or she loves the other more than him or herself.

That is the true gift of the magi.

Here, this morning, it’s grey with the promise of snow in the color of the sky, or perhaps just of a cold misty-rain like we had last night. Either way, I’m off to look up the showtimes and ticket availability for Harry Potter today, and then to do one thing and another before we go.

I don’t know what it’s like where you are ~ but I hope that inside, at least, it’s bright and warm.