Sometimes the sun is out, and sometimes in goes in. When it is out, we all smile and are happy to see it. When it goes in and stays in for days on end, we are not happy. Then like today when the sun is in with patches of blue sky there is a sense of promise in the air. Of hope the blue will get bigger and those dark grey skies over there – will not come over here and dump their clammy contents. Today grey skies with blue patches. Small ones. No rain to speak of.
Especially at this time of year, and on through the darkening days of December and January/February/March, there is a real tendency to be adversely affected by the low levels of light. I am. I’ve a little box which pumps out light of the right kind and I sit with it each day to bump up my daily light dosage. No, I probably don’t have S.A.D. in a clinical sense however that extra light does help my poor brain to look lively when it would rather lay down and hibernate. Until spring time.
Walking out among the fields and remote farm houses today in the dim light I wonder, now, about the people from long ago. Hard lives, truly grim lives. They made this landscape, huge chunks of it anyway. I’m thinking that perhaps the human response to weather, the ups, the downs hasn’t changed much. Just like the response of plants and vegetation to changing conditions, it’s chemical a lot of it, I presume.
But where am I going with this? Oh, perhaps a thought about the rhythm of the seasons and how our indoor lives, predominately so for most, has us like plants growing under artificial conditions. A life in eternal sunshine! All the same I have the feeling we are still deeply effected by the seasons, the weather, and all manner of more subtle influences known and unknown. Lets face it nothing happens in isolation from anything else.
And I am now going to cut and run before I drown in my own ignorance. I am not carrying a banner of any kind today, just a love of our land and all that makes it.
Many thanks to my friends who walked out under grey skies with me this day and kept a smile in their hearts.
I am not so sure that a life spent under artificial light inside buildings is ‘sunshine’, not in terms of the light (photons) or metaphorically. For a long time I’ve thought that it would be a lot better for us all if we did acknowledge the seasons and hibernate to some extent. It seems to me that most of what goes on isn’t required anyway, as can be seen in a downturn in the ecconomy. Managed slowing would be good. We might then look towards the ‘fact’ of our physical experience as human beings.
Sun faced Buddha, Moon faced Buddha; not to be swept away by conditions. Even if it were cloudy almost all the time to accept it and find the peace in it… Not so easy I find. Even the interconnectedness of it can seem like a great force rolling on, making me and yet making me feel abandoned by it. The ever present tention between aspects of the will presenting new challenges to remain mindfull… And in the dark days of winter the challenges all too easily assume a size far too big to fit in my ‘pot’ and bits ‘spill out’ causing damp patches on the carpet of my (Buddha)face. Roll on the spring, both of my mind and the seasons!
No Dave, I don’t think it is sunshine either. And I too support the thought of moving into hibernation at this time of year. At the very least to settle down to a less out and about way. Yes, out in the sunshine when it is shining. And in the rain too if necessary. I don’t think official hibernation is going to fly though.
Yes, role on…. But here’s a thought. At one time in the monastery we were asked to refrain from complaining about the wind, of which there is a lot. And when I started to notice how much complaining was going on in my scull, about not only wind since it came with rain rather often, I deliberately decided to quit. Not complaining is quite easy once one notices it is there. Really. But the dark days, my dad called this time of year ‘the black hole’, are hard for some of us. Perhaps one of those lights 4 u 2?