“You are here for a short span of eternity and will one day, perhaps soon, be called to join the cosmic mix,” writes Rico Provasoli
This morning the last Christmas cactus blossom on my dining table withered before dropping from its branch. I have had this particular house plant since it came with a home we bought when my daughter was born forty-nine years ago. And every winter it is a wonder how the plant is prompted by an intelligence to know when its time has come to grace my home with a hearty crop of pink flowers.
Every Christmas season when the plant sprouts new buds, it is a reminder of the perennial cycle of birth followed by decay. I felt sad as the cactus gasped its last shout of beauty. I turned my gaze from the dying bloom. But then I caught myself in one of mankind’s chronic habits, that tendency to look away from that necessary part of the great rhythm of Life.
When I was just twenty, drunk with the scent of immortality, bumming around Europe for a few years, every dawn promised a new epiphany. New food, drink, language, customs, and culture unfolded, delightful and so varied from my upbringing. But, as every flower fades, so did that endless parade of new experiences.
The dying blossom on my table reminds me to consider the life cycle in a new way, just as the young man in Europe was introduced to fresh cultural views. It’s as if this grand mystery of flowers appears in my life right on schedule like a Swiss train.
Taking this to heart, I reflected on how our modern culture hides decay – parking the aged in nursing homes, making fading glamor almost a sin for former beauty queens, and the madness of Botox and face lifts – questing to halt the inexorable course of life.
As an old man, happy to simply wake up in his own bed every morning, celebrating another day to live life to its fullest, I delight in the tuft of hair growing from my ears, shaggy eyebrows and a face wrinkled like an old boot left in the sun.
Once every month or so I am forced to confront myself in the mirror as I chop at my graying beard gone wild. I wink at my reflection, our private joke that I now know, in an existential way, that I am not the age classification the insurance policy reduces me to.
I am part of life, like an ocean wave created from wind and currents, eventually cresting near the shore, breaking as it cascades and then laps the beach, only to be reabsorbed by the sea. No worries, Mate. You are here for a short span of eternity and will one day, perhaps soon, be called to join the cosmic mix.
The long winter nights have been quite cold. The trees, skeletons of their summertime glory, declare their survival of the deep frosts with a promise of new buds in the next few months.
My old Russian Blue cat has grown a hefty winter coat and when we sit together as I drink a cup of morning tea in the sun, he nudges me for a stroke or two. And so, these simple life events are enough. They support my trust in The Mystery. That ineffable pulse of life coming and going, arising and falling, birthing and dying, now soothes my spirit. And this quiet moment of grace all started with a withering Christmas cactus blossom. A messenger that called for me to investigate my aversion to the end of its life.
It seems that the Zen practice of curiosity about all experience is urging me on. To stay with it, to question my beliefs about old patterns, preferences, avoidance of the ugly and decaying, turning away from all that is not beauty and love and promising to be wonderful and happy. To inquire within about the old habit of avoidance.
So rather than grow depressed with my last blossom of the season, I find myself reveling in yet another display of the grand paradox of life. The promise of life returning with new growth on my dining table. And that is perhaps the greatest gift of all.
As every flower fades and as all youth departs, so life at every stage, so every virtue, so our grasp of truth blooms in its day and may not last forever. Since life may summon us at every age, be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor, be ready bravely and without remorse to find new light that old ties cannot give. In all beginnings dwells a magic force for guarding us and helping us to live.
– Herman Hesse
First published in goodmenproject.com and on Medium – Photo credit: Flickr
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